I've been working with UEngine and when going back to 3Dmax workflow I really miss this grouping boards for comenting a group of nodes in the material editor. I use it for organizing different parts of the blueprint functions or material animations or complex node functions. But I can find it useful when also organizing full materials on 3dmax.   For example, when working in archviz, I find it really usefull for example to differ from common materials, different areas... for example to gruop architecture materials, furniture materials, accessories materials, people, etc... all in the same viewport.   I sometimes use tabs, but at the end of the day I have lots of duplicated materials.   I attach a couple images of the idea. Show More

Push has 1 single option" Push value. But this modifier could have much more options for better control: -Push along normals options:  Only pushing along normals, doing an average with colateral normals, blend values, etc. -Selfintersection on/off (avoiding self collision mesh when using push.   -I am sure we can think with more options. Show More

Could you add the ability to animate the new Material Switcher? Show More

We need to be able to pick a sub object selection (Face(s),Edge(s),Vert(s)) and use it as the reference coordinate system the same way we can with objects. This should work for splines as well, curved segments would still just use their 2 vertices, and the spline sub object would use it's first and last verts.   Also there needs to be a command for "Set Reference Coordinate System" that we can hot-key. So just make a selection, hit the hot-key, and bam you are working in that ref coord. There is a free script that does something similar by aligning the working pivot, to your sub object selection. This video demonstrates the workflow pretty well. It works ok, but is a little slow/clunky and puts you in working pivot mode which is not always ideal. It also does not work with splines, and you can't pick a previous ref coord from the drop down. https://youtu.be/NypFt_W9NAc Show More

It would be handy to be able to get and set vertex normals using polyOp methods. That way, approachable custom tools and modifiers are made possible, as well as advanced Data Channel modifier operators when using the Maxscript operator with Faces as the input. Something along these lines:   polyOp.getVertNormal <Poly poly> <int face> <int vert> node:<node=unsupplied> polyOp.setVertNormal <Poly poly> <int face> <int vert> type:(#unspecified | #specified | #explicit) normal:<point3 normal> split:<bool=false> node:<node=unsupplied> polyOp.getVertNormalType <Poly poly> <int face> <int vert> --> {#unspecified | #specified | #explicit}   Where both normal: and split: would only be applicable when type was set to #explicit, with normal setting the normal direction and split specifying whether the vertex normal would be the same one for all the vertex faces or a new by-face normal will be set. Show More

Within the slice modifier, have the option to add more than one slice.  Please, refer to this:   http://rayfirestudios.com/features/slice/ Show More

Please support pr particle motion blur. Your implementation currently is a linear construct, which makes it impossible to render particles with correct motion blur.   The issue has been reported multiple times and is a road blocker. We know you work hard, but please escalate this issue to the top of the pile since it is a fundamental workflow killer.   This is the current situation, I greatly extended the motion trails to fully expose the weakness. If this was working the motion blur trails on the gif would have been curly.   This is a major showstopper.   Show More

ProSound is currently very buggy and prone to crashing.  I would like to list the problems and request features related to ProSound for 3ds max here: Playback doesn't always work - when loading audio you can hear it when you scrub the timeline but not when you press play on the timeline (sometimes). You have to go into ProSound and change the playback audio quality from medium to low back to medium, then hit the close button, then it will work when you press play on the timeline. When you change the mini curve editor to the dope sheet from the Editor menu, the dope sheet does not always automatically zoom into the wav, you have to scroll around to find it. When selecting the wav, if you accidently expand the master waveform and select it, 3ds max will often crash Once you have changed the mini curve editor to the dope sheet from the Editor menu, the track bar disappears and the ‘Close’ button disappears. The only way to close the dope sheet/mini curve editor now is to tear it from the tab and hit the x to close it. If the track bar disappears after using the mini curve editor, sometimes you can’t open it back up from the show UI window on the main toolbar and the only way to reload it is to reload the default UI. 3ds max only supports 16 bit wav files. It would be nice if it supported other formats. It could also be a nice feature to be able to easily load a reference video (video texture on a plane) with audio for animation reference in 3ds max, and be able to use the dope sheet or some other UI to move both the video and audio around separately and more easily line it up to do lip sync and animation for characters. (You can currently load the video as a bitmap and select the starting frame in the material editor under Time). Show More

Since the focus of realtime preview development seems to be on Nitrous features currently instead of on ShaderFX/DirectX shaders, it would be beneficial to add support for roughness/smoothness maps. The other crucial preview features (normals, metalness, AO, shadows, HDRI maps) are sort of there like Mr Eloi Andaluz showed in his recent, great video. However, the lack of accurate roughness still makes the materials look a bit off compared to an actual render / PBR shader preview.   Nitrous can provide good-looking previews which is very nice, but certain shortcomings such as this (and lack of planar reflections for example) still don't really make it a viable option for proper rendering of materials. Real-time previews in Max viewport still need more love in one form or another. Show More

There are times that using Explicit Normals in Max is great. There are other times, not so great. I propose some new functions to convert Explicit Normals into Smoothing Groups (in essence, the reverse of adding an Edit Normals modifier onto a mesh to see the current explicit normal based off of smoothing groups).   meshops.setSGfromNormals <trimesh|mesh|editable_mesh>mesh facelist:<bitarray defaults to #all> clearExplicit:<Boolean true> skipBorders:<Boolean true> polyop.setSGfromNormals <node editable_poly>mesh facelist:<bitarray defaults to #all> clearExplicit:<Boolean true> skipBorders:<Boolean true>   These methods should calculate the smoothing groups into the mesh by finding all co-located vertices with matching normal vectors and adding them to the same smoothing groups. The functions should be smart enough to consolidate smoothing groups among adjacent smoothed faces/polygons.   facelist: Should limit results to the passed bitarray. If no faces passed, use all faces. clearExplicit: Should remove the explicit normals on the faces that acquired smoothing groups* (see next option). skipBorders: When true, explicit normals are kept on the border vertices when clearExplicit it turned on. Show More

Now, if you try to drag multiple maps such as Diff / gloss / normal from the windows folder to the Slate material editor canvas, only one map will be inserted. I think it just needs to be a feature to insert a few. This is an obvious, fundamental and very necessary thing . Thank you! Show More

Hello 3ds max developer,   is it possible to bring the insert pivot point function from maya to 3ds max. I know there are workaround s in 3ds max to change working pivot point etc.   But in maya it is really powerful and fast to insert and align the pivot point and bake it for example.    Since Maya is part of autodesk, the development should be more fluent between your program's,too.   Thank's for all your work you put into the development the last couple of years. 3ds max is back 🙂 Show More

Global Search was a great addition, and we use it all the time in the studio, but we ended many times wanting to do the same in PFlow, Node Material Editor, so it should be context aware. Supporting/allowing the TAB shortcut would ease the process when using different DCC apps. Show More

Hi! Simple quality of life idea: The compact material editor is now very old stuff, so to work easier on a single monitor would be great to have an attachable SME or setting it like a viewport view.  Thanks! Show More