Consistent tools, workflow and experience

[Swordslayer]

You hear it all the time, yet nobody takes a stance - max lacks consistency big time. Whenever I compare max to some other software, it's always the biggest difference. There seem to be no standards, design manuals or even cooperation whatsoever, implementation details of similar features are different across the application, you sometimes get the feeling they are parts of different softwares in one package, sticked together in a haste. And it's a pity.

The interface is not consistent, the behavior is not consistent and I find myself doing things expecting some behavior that is common elsewhere only to find out 100th time it doesn't work and thinking 'oh, right, I have to do it different way here, silly me' - and this is after almost two decades with max.

There's Place Pivot Surface in the default quadmenu, when I first saw it, I was happy, now I don't use it because it doesn't work with the regular Edit Working Pivot mode which seems to use a different working pivot - hell if I know, instead of finding out, I stopped using it.

There's point-to-point edge selection in the UVW Unwrap modifier which works COMPLETELY different than the so-called point-to-point selection in Editable Poly (by the way I hate that one, it's awkward and weird and whenever I try figuring how it works - and that it works better if I deselect everything first so as not to trigger ring selection - which beats the purpose completely, I end up selecting by clicking instead).

Some spinners are sticky and keep their last input value (editable poly, mostly), some reset to default value each and every time (editable spline mostly, for repeated operations you have to put it in each time).

There are also Sticky Keys that were excitedly anticipated before max 2008, yet nobody uses them now as they are limited to a few hard-coded editable poly functions and you cannot use them anywhere else - and nothing changed since they were added, they are mostly forgotten.

There is the super useful Tangent Handle sub-object mode that allows mulitple tangent manipulation in Patches which is not in Shape objects.

When you click subobject icons holding modifier keys in editable poly, you get converted selection, which doesn't work anywhere else (say editable spline, often find myself trying it there).

Editable spline has divide for segments, which would be very useful if they could be slid, pinched etc. in the same way that edge loops can be in Editable Poly.

There's Folder History in some dialogs (Open Script) and not in others that are otherwise almost the same (Run Script).

Window/crossing depending on selection direction turned on? Well, it only works in the viewport, doesn't work in unwarp, when selecting nodes in MCG or basically anywhere else. I know it is that way, yet almost every single time I find myself doing it out of habit, before it dawns on me that it won't work that way...

Some operations have progressbar, most of them don't, some display their own, some use the prompt bar for that, others output text there instead.

Units of axes in the graph editor are system units, not display units, happened with a few modifiers in the past, mostly fixed, but still lurking in unexpected places.

After all the updates to spinners, MCG still comes with spinners that are not draggable and don't zero out on right-click.

All the code input windows are different, Script editor will use syntax highlighting and colors, newScript() window will only respect the background color and nothing else, MAXScript Listener comes with its own set of colors and shortcuts, and then there are Script controllers with their own pure-text fields.

Some operations allow you to navigate the viewport in the process, for some of them you have to stop the tool first, otherwise the tool effect will disappear - you will only find which are those when you try for example rotating viewport.

Many of the ribbon tools are only one-way, i.e. when you set the value elsewhere, it won't change in ribbon, while in the rest of the interface it shows as soon you change it.

Changing the material is undoable, changing wirecolor not.

Z to zoom extents? Works in viewport and MCG, doesn't work in Slate Material Editor (Alt+Ctrl+Z? WTF?) nor in Particle View - and Trackview? Better forget that one for good...

Want to change Render Sample Size of material preview in Slate? Oh, you have to switch to Compact material editor first and in ITS options change that, then switch back, same with other settings.

Global Search in viewport is different in looks and behavior department than the search in MCG (in Slate and Particle View, pressing X switches to main max window instead to make matters even more complex).

Some of the menubars (Particle View, Script Editor etc.) respect windows style, some are completely different (main menubar still has the gradient background as a remnant of the past while the rest of the UI is flat).

There are even some gradient style aqua buttons still scattered across parts of UI that were new few versions back and untouched since like the Template Manager, and even all-white (despite dark UI) gradient style 'Customize Ribbon' dialog (the Communication center and QAT don't fit rest of the UI either).

MCG, Particle View and Slate Editor use the same SDK for nodes yet they use different shortcuts, look different and behave slightly different, when people complain about something, it gets changed in one area and remains unchanged in the others.

There are multiple slightly different floating tear-off UI parts, ribbon parts show the handles only on hower, they're almost black and come with an additional button to 'dock it back', extended menus come with a windows-themed titlebar with a cross only.

Even if you have Caddies disabled, you get manipulator caddies when Select and Manipulate mode is active.

There's only one of each for Save Active Perspective/Ortho View in both the viewport menu and menubar Views menu, yet you can save multiple configurations in the Viewport Layout Tabs... it's a slightly different functionality yet still the only way to save multiple.

There are many functions that only work under the right circumstances that are hard to guess if you don't already know them. Very little in max is actually predictable. I could go on but I'm already tired just from thinking about it.

These are all things people were complaining about before, nothing new, nothing fixed either. And everything goes against the notion of max offering a consistent and predictable experience - changing those things one by one will help a bit but won't change much unless it's applied across the application and for every new or changed feature.

[joeaf9321]

Yep, we definitely need an evolution of the UI, something more flexible and organized, innovative.

[EricsUsername]

I hope this idea is not lost to what appears to be an auto-cull for ideas older than 3 max versions.

[jibijib]

The inconsistancy between Editable Poly and the UVW Unwrap Editor is what gets me, UVW Editor is practically the same but with UVWs, but they work COMPLETELY differently - including select by element, keys assigned to grid/angle snapping, and FFS GET RID OF THAT PIVOT POINT thing, Max developers removed the simple task of moving polygons, and made the needs to rotate the pivot point of it primary. Who decides this is a good idea and what operates as QA on this?

[dmitriy.shpilevoy]

Maxscript is its own bottomless pit. Does feel like a lot of people working on it and none of them knows what others are doing.

Some of UI parameters are not exposed and you will never be able to get desired result without rewriting the whole thing yourself, some functions require very specific conditions(though work like a charm if you do it via user interface), some stuff is only accessible with actionman blackbox, other is not exposed at all and doesn't generate any events in macrorecorder.

I doubt it can be solved case by case because it will end up the same - different people will solve different issues in different ways and we'll end up in slightly better place from where we started. It needs real refactoring with well thought through system and conventions so anyone could refer to a document and figure a way to implement new feature or modify old one in standardized manner instead of reinventing the wheel for every tool and function.

In a perfect world it should be possible to recreate whole 3dsmax using maxscript.

It really is discouraging seeing how this suggestion is 5 years old and very little has changed consistency-wise.

[mschnekHRKMG]

100000(and more)% agreed on all of these mentioned above and here's more of little annoyances I have to deal with on daily basis:
- While "Smooth" and "Hard" buttons for Edge subobject mode similar to Maya were nice addition, they translate pretty badly into the "classic" Max's method - the smoothing groups. The problem can be replicated pretty easily if you just for example select one edge-loop around a sphere and set it to Hard. Then, if you select all the polygons and look at smoothing groups you see Max is using around 2/3 of ALL the available smoothing groups "overlapping" each other to produce desired smoothing, when it should really only need two.
- Vertex Paint modifier - practically not a single command from this (in some pipelines heavily used) modifier is exposed to maxscript and you also cannot assign selection shortcuts to its Loop and Ring commands. And this problem is rather more widespread all over Max. Honestly I can't figure out a reason why multiple "Edit XYZ" modifiers/modes in Max which often have a common set of basic commands (like select Loop/Ring, ignore backfacing etc.) don't have a common set of (idealy fully hotkey-able) controls. Some of their hotkeys are even mutually exclusive - i.e. if you assign a hotkey for some command in one of them, you will get a keyboard shortcut conflict if you try to assign the same hotkey for the same command in the other modifier.

Unwrap Modifier & Editor has so many usability/inconsistency issues it deserves to be written separately: 

- Filter Selected Faces in UV Editor/when Unwrap Modifier is active - since Max is unable to isolate subobject selections like Maya, using it is pretty much the only way to work with UVs on a collapsed model and retain your sanity, BUT - not only collapsing the stack while Filter Selection is active deletes rest of the mesh, it somehow also seems to affect the Hide/Unhide state of vertices in the base Epoly object - ones that have been hidden by Filter Selection at any point during UV-ing STAY hidden even AFTER you collapse your modifier stack(!), but it's only vertices so you can't see it right away. It completely messes up things like selection or snapping(the usual point when you discover the issue). Then you have to go the vertex mode, select all and unhide all(vertices) for every object you want Snap to work again.

- another UV Editor/Unwrap "peculiarity" - is there any reason whatsoever, why Mirror(And Align) Horizontal hotkeys works ONLY if you have your mouse cursor over UV Editor window, while Mirror(Align) Vertical works only with the mouse over a viewport?

- why is Ignore Backfacing turned on by default, while everywhere else it's the opposite?

- Straighten Selection doesn't seem to respect face area ratio/distances between individual loops in a mesh and while it does the straightening of a shell(off course only if it's all quads), it shifts the inner loops/rings heavily, often(but not always) even when the actual mesh topology of the selected shell is completely regular like a round part of subdivided cylinder for example.

- You can create UV seams by breaking selected edges in the viewport, but you cannot sew them back the same way like as if you had an edge selected in UV Editor and hit Stitch Custom/To Target. In Maya this works perfectly fine.

- I would probably give my only kidney for the whole Align and Snap along with Arrange and Layout rollouts of Maya's UV editor ported to Max - One click stacking of selected shells still seems to be like an impossible feat of magic in the Max universe (along with Unwrap Editor staying open even after deselecting the object)
- While addition Maya's Unfold unwrap algorithm (in 2022 I think) was nice (and long overdue) along with cleaning up the mess with several Unwrap commands not exposed to MAXScript/hotkey editor, I recently encountered a weird behavior - if you assign a hotkey to Quick Peel and use it on selected faces that have their seams already cut manually but were not flattened(and they share common edges in model) - i.e. strip of faces "around" a box - Quick Peel hotkey seems to rather do Quick Planar Map command instead - it will collapse them into single shell rather than map them separately. Note that if you press the Quick Peel button in the editor interface instead, it works as expected.

[thomasphillips1992]

"There is the super useful Tangent Handle sub-object mode that allows mulitple tangent manipulation in Patches which is not in Shape objects."

Blows my mind that they still haven't added selectable handles to spline objects

[mehmet.aktay]

Autodesk will not make any of these requested features for Max. They won't do it even if it takes 10 years or 20 years. Change your software as soon as possible. This could be Maya, Blender or even Cinema 4d. You've seen the 2025 update, right? Like a joke. They won't do anything you want.

What does Max need to be a decent animation software? The things that everyone has written (I have written below and some I have forgotten among them) are necessary, but they will not do any of them.

The interface should definitely be renewed (its current version is like Windows 3.1)
Biped, CAT or an equivalent system needs to be seriously updated or added.
Particle system must support multiprocessor. A new one should definitely be written. tyflow is nice but it is 500 dollars and very expensive.
Water and fire simulations should be added.
Fabric and Rigid Body Mass effect should be updated.
Hair and Fur is dead and should be updated.
All screens under the animation menu need to be updated wire, reaction, curve editor morpher skin motion retargeting etc. etc.

Crowd system is very poorly understood, it doesn't even have a lesson. Something like this should also be added.

Unless a Chinese friend uploads a video to YouTube, we won't see the few innovations added to Max. They don't even prepare a lesson explaining the new features. Autodesk Max YouTube channel is closed to comments and they haven't even prepared lessons since 2018. A few user lessons have been added and that's it.

So what will they do?

A few developers will only add transfer files like USD, they will add things like ACES that vray added 5 years ago because they had to for Arnold, they will add a few give and take file formats and make a few bug fixes. If the operating system changes, just let it work on it, they will make the arrangements and use the same software for another 10 years. they will make money and watch the program die on its own. For all of Max's work, they will direct it to Maya, and for the architecture, they will direct it to Revit.

Those who write plugins for Max do not write anymore. Gradually they will switch to other programs. If you look at Scriptspot, there are tons of scripts that are dead and have not been written yet, most of them cannot even be downloaded anymore.

They are definitely investing more in Maya. They even made many updates to modeling, I watched a few tutorials for maya and some of the modeling flows really seemed easier than max. Autodesk has already developed Revit for Architecture a lot. I think Max will soon no longer be used even for architecture.

Now that's enough, I've been learning for 8 years and I'm going to go into full production and earn money. Now I'm slowly quitting learning Max and starting to learn Cinema 4D. Because I follow it, nothing the community wants is added or updated. They don't include it in their programs. I'm pretty smart and the learning curve for a program can't be that long. They don't prepare lessons. Only architecture courses are being prepared. And my purpose is not architecture. For years, I stupidly believed that Max would be developed and the animation department would be improved, but I was wrong from the beginning. Even now, it seems easier to learn Maya. Because it is being developed in some way or another and trying to adapt to the new age. If only the UI for Max was changed and modernized, learning the program would be 100% faster. Like solving a math problem, you will find a button among hundreds of buttons, click on it, click on another, then click on another, etc.

Maxon accelerated Cinema 4d by at least 10 times. UI updated. and lastly they added the built-in Particle system, before that they added Pyro etc. etc. I looked at modeling tools and they have a tool like matrix extrude and there is nothing like that in max. There is sculpting and body paint. Very good. The interface is very nice and directive. I'm just learning and so far it's fine and seems pretty adequate for most jobs. In each program, modeling is done in some way. It's all a matter of habit. Modifier stack is important, but you shouldn't stay in this program just for that. and every software has similar things. There always comes a point where we have to convert it to editable poly. Most of the time, things don't work or break, so we have to turn to editable poly. In this case, the modifier stack becomes dysfunctional.

Anyway, I wrote a long article. As a result, Max will not be developed, friends. With a few developers, they will only make bug fixes and necessary additions, that's all. Leave this program and switch to other programs as soon as possible.