USD for 3ds Max 0.6 is now available to download for free for any Max customer on subscription. You can get it in your Autodesk account portal. This update is available for 3ds Max 2022-2024 and features several new exciting capabilities. See changelog.
Export & Import Improvements
We spent a lot of effort filling the gaps in the capabilities of our USD Exporter and Importer. This improves translation of data to and from USD.
Material Variants
One of the main reasons we added the Material Switcher to 3ds Max 2024 was to facilitate workflows for creating USD assets that have material variants.
There is now an option in the exporter to export Material Switcher materials to material variants. This is a fast and convenient way to make models that have different looks that can be swapped inside USD.
Animation Import
You can now import transform animations and USDSkel animations into Max.
Import SDK
The importer now has an SDK for extending and controlling our importer with similar concepts as in the exporter. 3rd-party devs can now implement their own PrimReader, ShaderReader and Import Chaser to control parts of the import translation or to augment the import provided by our default functions.
USD Explorer
One of the most exciting new features is the USD Explorer. This new explorer lets you inspect the data inside a USD Stage as well as make basic changes to the USD settings inside Max. This mimics much of the workflow available in Maya USD--and we are working to consolidate and share some of the tools and workflows between our tools.
You can use a few USD-related commands on USD prims in the explorer such as change visibility, change variants, activate and more. With this first release, all edits in the USD Explorer are put in the Session layer. There is no exposure to choosing what layer these edits go to yet nor to save the edits to anything other than the session layer.
