have been working with 3ds Max since 1999 — more than 25 years — and it remains one of the most powerful and beloved tools in the 3D industry. However, today 3ds Max feels outdated and isolated, as it still has no native version for macOS and Apple Silicon.   In 2025, this is no longer just a convenience issue — it’s a strategic necessity. Apple hardware (M-series chips) now powers thousands of studios, freelancers, and educational institutions worldwide. We see Blender, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Maya, ZBrush, DaVinci Resolve, and many others running natively — and performing beautifully — on macOS.   Meanwhile, 3ds Max users are forced to rely on virtual machines (Parallels, VMWare) or server solutions just to open projects. Despite the limitations, I personally continue to work on my MacBook Pro 14″ M3 Max (128 GB RAM)through Parallels, producing large-scale architectural visualizations without crashes or compromises — but imagine how much more efficient and inspiring this experience could be if 3ds Max ran natively on macOS.   Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit and Metal API now make cross-platform development more accessible than ever. Autodesk has both the talent and resources to make this happen. Please consider bringing 3ds Max to macOS (Apple Silicon) — it would not only revive the legacy of this great software but also unlock a huge creative community that is currently left out.   Respectfully, Evgeny Litvyakov Founder of baxx pro — Design and 3D Visualization Studio Show More

Hi there,    I would like to see Motion Design Tools similar to C4D MoGraph or at least an equivalent to Maya's MASH in 3DsMax.   The idea is to create a modernized, native end to end solution with nested tools and modifiers that are easily accessible to new users. Ideally that toolbar will have effectors that will let you modify animation keys of multiple objects simultaneously and apply delay, stepping, dynamics, gravity and other effects fast and easy. These could also interact with particle emitters and tyFlow or even Phoenix FD sims so that advanced users can create awesome visuals in 3Ds MAX.     Hope others share my view, thanks  Show More

We need more viewport / quicksilver improcements. Implementing RTX features, blurry reflections, reflections between the objects, global illumination, reflecting the lights shapes not only as point lights, etc. Show More

Compound nodes are great for compacting complex material trees into one single node.   We can go from this  To this But there are areas where compound nodes can be made more useful.   • One limitation is that assigning materials outputs to objects requires dragging a specific output from the Slate and release it on top of a single object you wish to apply the material to. Also, all shortcuts associated with assigning materials from regular material nodes are disabled for compound nodes.  This means you cannot assign materials from compound nodes to multiple objects at once and the usefulness of these nodes is significantly reduced. I just realized that with multiple selected objects you get an option if you want to assign to all the selected objects. That's a solution to assigning to multiple, but I still feel not having to drag and drop is very beneficial too. I feel this feature is of course better than nothing, but it's not so intuitive to figure out. Therefore having the ability to the suggested solution below would be beneficial:   A solution to this is to have the system check if there are actual material outputs in the selected compound node, and if so enable Assign To Selected in toolbar buttons, menu options and shortcuts. If the user runs the shortcut, because there can be multiple material outputs there should be a popup menu where you pick which material output to assign to your selected objects, such as this popup menu below:     Additionally, right-clicking on a material output should give you the option to Assign To Selected, because then it's obvious which output you are interacting with.   This can improve the usability of compound nodes greatly. Show More

Max needs an unify Node Editor where we can see, connect and edit everything. In this node editor we should be able to edit materials, particles, objects with their modifiers and controllers, hierarchy, constrains, ik, wires, expressions, environment variables...   Everything edited in a node view (see zookeeper, get some inspiration from Houdini and Modo).   Show More

It is good that we in 2024 can finally control the Viewport Clipping values parametrically via MAXScript. Handling Viewport Clipping in previous versions have been one of the biggest annoyances inside 3ds max.   However, not all users know that this is possible to change with actual values, or where to find scripts that provide an interface.  I suggest that parametric control for the near and far Clipping Planes should be added to the Active Viewport Settings so that any user can find and control this in the most logical place to look without the need for external solutions.   And now that we can control this with using actual numbers we do not need to rely on that slider gizmo thing on the view of the viewport, so please let the user toggle whether this gizmo should be visible in the viewport while Viewport Clipping is enabled. And please expose this to MAXScript so it can be toggled by custom tools. It is often the case that when you need to make screenshots of the viewport you need to have Viewport Clipping enabled to minimize z-fighting, and the gizmo will always be there as a distraction. Let users be able to choose if they want to include it or not.     Show More

The Reset Xform function inside of 3ds max is often used for resetting unwanted scale on geometry objects, and I think more so than for resetting rotation. However, there are many circumstances where you only want to reset scale, and not reset the orientation of the object.   It would therefore be useful to have an additional Reset Xform, or mode of the original that will preserve the orientation of the object. This is useful when reconstructing or recovering orientation from geometry that has lost its original transform at some point.   This very simple image illustrates how maintaining the orientation in a Reset Xform can be useful. Simply, when a rotated object has its transform reset by Reset Xform (step 3) the bounding box brackets indicate what the original orientation is, and this does not change even when rotating the pivot. Applying Reset Xform at step 4 will only put us back at step 3, while a Reset Xform that maintains the rotation will remove the rotational offset without changing the geometry.   To reset such rotation offset with current Reset Xform you will need to reset the rotation, apply Reset Xform, then apply that rotation (inversed), which by current 3ds max tools require tedious copy pasting of transform data.   It would be much better if a mode of Reset Xform could make such process maintaining orientation part of the operation. That could save a lot of time when reconstructing lost transforms and resetting transform offsets. Show More

[entry has been edited with refined ideas since initial post] The Extrude Modifier is useful, but there is one annoying aspect of it that needs updating.   Currently the modifier will only extrude according to the original Z axis of the object. This means rotating the pivot only will not work to change direction, instead the user is forced to perform a Reset Xform on a rotated object when the intended extrusion direction is facing along the world Z axis, and after the reset rotate the object back to how it should be rotated.   Completely annoying and unnecessary procedure.   The modifier needs at least an option to pick which axis to extrude along, and if these axes are based on a modifier gizmo they become independent of the object transform. Lock gizmo to external object to achieve "world space" type behavior (similar to how Slice modifier can lock gizmo to another scene object). A second modifier gizmo can act as a target, where extrusion direction and length can be obtained from. Automatically set extrusion length to the distance between gizmo/target could speed up modelling process quite a lot since eyeballing extrusion distance will no longer be necessary. This could also be utilized by custom scripts to produce modelling workflows. It could also be potentially useful to use two independent objects to obtain direction and extrusion length.   Left: Extrusion Axis facing the wrong way. Right: Extrusion axis facing the right way.   Show More

gLTF is quickly gaining momentum, many online and offline engines support this interchange format. Autodesk itself is supporter of the gLTF standard. Let's add native gLTF import and export support to 3dsMax! Show More

Loooooong time limitation, please make procedural maps display in viewport correct ... we're in 2017 now. So far, the only workaround we found is to use Neil Blevins' TexMap Preview script: while it's great, it's not the ideal solution. We pay subscriptions / licenses, please fix useful things. Thanks. Show More

The Resource Collector in 3ds Max is kind of hit-or-miss these days. Sometimes it skips textures or just doesn't quite do the job. It’d be great if they could update it to reliably gather all assets, including proxies, Vray textures, HDRIs, and so on. Show More

one of the biggest strenght of 3dsmax are modifiers, simple yet procedural approach.  Yet, we have a lot of features in max that are not in the form of modifiers that will be extremelly more powerfull if they exist as a modifier.  Some examples:   -Array as modifier. -"Generate topology" (from ribbon polygon modelling). will allow to do changes on the base mesh, and see updates without a destructive workflow. -Conform as modifier. -We have "Extract spline" from an edge selection on editpoly.  Having a modifier that does that procedurally based on Selected edges will give a lot of new procedural approaches. -Boolean as modifiers. -....... Show More

Fillets with variable width between boolean operant intersections. The idea would be for the Boolean modifier to cut strips of variable width between the intersections of Boolean objects. Those gaps can be filled with a smooth bridging algorithm that creates topology strips to fill those gaps. This would be a game-changing feature for modeling as it would allow solid-modeling-like variable-width fillets. No other poly modeling software except Modo offers this feature.   The main problem with using the Retopology modifier to create somewhat smoothed intersections is that those intersection fillets can't be large and of variable width like Modo Meshfusion. The Chamfer modifier can't create chamfers between complex intersecting curved surfaces. There used to be a 'Hardmesh' plugin for 3dsmax, but it is no longer updated for 3dsmax since 2020 and is not well integrated with the new boolean workflow. There is also the 'Smoothboolean' plugin, but it only works statically on Proboolean objects and not inside the modifier stack.   Just like Meshfusion, it does not have to constantly 'live' update when moving or changing boolean operants. That would be slow and performance-heavy. The solution would be that during changing of the boolean operants scale/move/rotate etc the base booleans operations are displayed (without the fillets) and as soon as the user stops editing, the fillets can be re-generated for those changed objects (Either with manual or automatic updating options). Also, there could be some sort of cashing of the resulting geometry so loading would be faster.     Show More

Make max have double precision so that it no longer suffers from rounding errors, or problems with large dimensions. Show More

Integrate the unified PhysX technology called FLEX into 3ds Max and Particle Flow in order to simulate different types of physics in the same system, here are some examples. •Liquids (water, goo) •Granular materials (sand, dirt) •Environmental cloth (flags, newspapers) •Rigid bodies (environmental debris) •Soft bodies (inflatables / tetrahedral meshes)   Check out this live demonstration and don't miss the WATER BALLOONS at 2:45! 🙂 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF1_Lo3Z3G4   Here is some more info from PhysXinfo.com http://physxinfo.com/news/11860/introducing-nvidia-flex-unified-gpu-physx-solver/ Show More

I would love to see tools in Max that allow us to clean up crappy CAD models and high poly count geometry into usable, "watertight" meshes with the click of a few buttons. Something along the lines of ZRemesher/Dynamesh, but with more options to deal with meshes that have holes or unwelded verts.  Show More