Share your 3dsmax Secrets

tan82 · 2007-11-28 03:34:47 UTC

onelpabico · 2007-12-08 03:09:15 UTC

to add a pop up notes descriptions, instruction, details and reminders to your scene so when somone open up your file, he/she can read it…

Right click on the toolbar, then customized.
On Group Box - make sure it is on MAIN
on category Box - make it ALL Commands, then look for ADD POP UP MENU, then drag the item to any toolbar you want. then close the Customize dialog box. to add a pop up note just click the new icon you added, and the pop-up menu will show up, add an instruction or whatever details you want for somebody to read once they open your max file. be sure the tick box (open this on start up) then save your scene.

Icetigris · 2007-12-13 11:47:43 UTC

I don’t know if this has been said yet (it didn’t come up in the search so I guess not), but here’s my suggestion:

-If your camera is panning/trucking/etc really slow/fast,
-select your camera and uniformly resize it on its Local Coordinate system

*it’s because your scene is unduly huge or tiny compared to your cameras

This saved me a lot of time on the animation project I’d been working on this semester when I realised my scene was really huge and my cameras were really tiny.

watteville · 2007-12-14 11:05:38 UTC

oh! that’s a good one. i just needed it: many thanks!

xissburg · 2008-01-22 05:51:40 UTC

If you’re having Z-Fighting in your viewport, adjust the viewport’s cliping planes manually to increase the depth buffer precision around your objects. You can do this by simply checking the Viewport Cliping option at the viewport right click menu(right click on viewport label). Then, move the bottom slider up(near plane) and the top slider down(far plane) until the artifacts disappear.

M-Saber · 2008-02-03 08:43:38 UTC

Thanks a lot, that really helps. I’ve had tons of files with that artifact. That really helps.

rcarr · 2008-02-15 07:23:13 UTC

Max doenst have a mixer to allow me to blend poses (NOT using BIPED or Morph targets) and save them to be used later in the animation If Max does have something like that inherint it is to time consuming wich doesnt fit my time budget

This plugin does the job quick and painless

PoseTool
www.simoworks.com

watteville · 2008-02-16 06:23:12 UTC

thanks very much rcarr for this link. i must try that one!!

nirsul · 2008-02-18 17:03:13 UTC

If you use lots of bitmaps - use bitmap proxies - it will make working in MAX much faster.
Toggle the trackbar when not animating - you get 2 cm more on the bottom of the screen.
If using MR - avoid using the raytrace map/material - it takes hours to render.
Use scripts and try avoiding plugins - MAX will in most cases work with old scripts but not plugins.

Nir

nirsul · 2008-02-18 17:15:42 UTC

If you need to constantly render 2 or more angles of the same project , say a building,
Instead of using more than 1 camera - Use only one and key its transforms (position) for each angle in successive frames and link the sun to that camera (and tree billboards as well)

To render all angles just render the animation in the range you need. a huge time saver !!!

Nir

nirsul · 2008-02-18 17:30:16 UTC

I am sure most of you never heard about the SHAPE view !

I just found about it - it lets you move a shape but what’s neat is that doing so moves the view but not the shape which is selected.

How do you get to this VIEW ? - select any shape and right click on the viewport lable and select VIEWS > SHAPE

move thge shape but it doesnt - only the grif and the rest of the scene is panning.

NIR

Self-Designer · 2008-02-19 00:16:02 UTC

It does transform the shape, only that the view is linked to it
I don’t really get its use so much… ok, maybe you do want sometimes your viewport to be linked to an object, so you can get easily focused on it, but then, why only shapes? and why can’t I save a specific viewport so I’ll be actually easily able to get back to it?

nirsul · 2008-02-20 02:18:41 UTC

Strangley enough - less than 1 day after dscovering this - (yesterday) I found a use.
I have a lathed object whose shape I needed to modify but as it is NOT aligned to either of the preset ortho views I just used the shape view - instead of rotating the shape to any of them ( or a clone of it). GREAT feature I must say.

Hey ADI - Just noticed we are actually neighbours - I live less than a mile from where you study !!! (I live in H-300)

Nir

WaseemOnLiNe · 2008-03-12 01:21:49 UTC

Thank you nirsul very much About the idea of Shape View, I see it very usefull, and it help me a lot , especially when my shape is not aligned to any of my standard Viewports

nirsul · 2008-03-17 15:34:25 UTC

Hey Neighbour !! How are u ?

I even speak arabic a bit.

NIR

cubecube · 2008-03-26 00:38:39 UTC

Nice tips nirsul.
Very usefull.

DeVangiel · 2008-04-07 15:44:44 UTC

dunno if anyone posted this already but…

alt+a = hotkey for the align tool, real timesaver

For poly modeling in Edit Poly mode and you need to get rid of a nasty edge, select the edge and click the Remove button in the Edit Edges rollout. Very useful for getting rid of triangular polys, say… around the mouth area of a face where you want to use turbo smooth.

Thanx

Chris

WaseemOnLiNe · 2008-04-07 16:22:45 UTC

In Edit poly
If you rotate or move a polygon, it’ll be a different result if you do that while you have extruding/beveling dialog rather than doing that alone…

heavyness · 2008-04-08 00:06:38 UTC

buy a mouse with a lot of buttons on it…

i use my thumb buttons for navigation and wireframe/shaded toggle [plus, you can use the CTRL + the extra buttons for more shortcuts].

asayan · 2008-04-27 11:00:49 UTC

Shape view’s a great idea. I’m sure I’ll find plenty of use for it. I wish the same could be done for objects though.

TIP: To get rid of your viewport background once and for all, press F11 (maxscript Listener), type:

backgroundImageFileName = “”

and press ENTER. Finally, just refresh your viewport by switching to wireframe and then back to whatever it was.