In Maya you can use Soft Selection to influence multiple meshes in two ways. Global and object modes. When global setting on, you can create smooth transformations from surfaces of an object to different nearly objects including polygons and NURBS. When Object mode on, you can move, rotate, or scale objects in the scene with falloff, without deforming the objects themselves.
So in 3DS max we can have 3 different modes to influence soft selection like Maya:
1- Sub-Object: only effect on surface of selected object (nearly vertex, edge and polygon that selected).
2- Global: affect on selected object sub-object and nearly objects surface's sub-objects .
3- Object: affect on nearly objects move, rotate or scale without effect on their sub-objects.
In this link you can see details of Maya soft select multiple meshes:
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