3dsmax Quick and Dirty Workflow Tips!
polycounter lvl 7
I read a lot in forums, people asking about things that are very easily done and they are either looking in the wrong direction or they are hidden so deep that you can't just spot them out easily. On top of that.. not many really mention them in tutorials!
These will be very useful especially for people who start getting into 3dsmax! Many might be surprising even to some who use max for a while.
I'll start by placing a few here, ofc there are many feel free to add your cool tip and keep it relevant!
Some useful shortcuts:
Shift+X enables Edge constraints.
V opens a view list to pick from.
Up arrow in a viewport enables the walk-through mode and brackets control its speed.
; repeats a command
flicking with RMB on the title of a quad enables the last accessed command
gc() typed in the maxScript slot cleans up your cache garbage.
? starts and stops playback in the active viewport.
N enables autokey
Alt+RMB opens a list where you can pick your transformation axis.
Shift +RMB allows you to quickly change your snap settings
Ctrl+C creates a camera on your perspective viewport looking exactly at what you are looking at that time!
Right click on your trackbar and "show Selection Ranges" so you can scale your keyframes easily. (or even reverse them)
press Q to cycle between selection modes (square, circular, polygonal, freehand lasso and paint)
Right Click on spinners to set them on their lowest value.
Ctrl+N to start a mini calculator that can paste the result as a value.
If you don't use the Track Bar.. well Hide it.. Customize>Show UI>Show Track Bar
Alt+Ctrl + *MB to drag on your Track Bar and interactively change the start\end frame (duration) or slide in a certain time bracket that you have set up by the amount of frames you see in your Track Bar (by default 100) over your entire animation time.
Some Useful Features:
Use "Collapse To" if you want to collapse your stack from a certain point downwards and keep the top intact (very useful if you have a skin modifier on top or any others you want to keep)
Copy\Paste\Rename Modifier these are a basic features that many people tend to forget or oversee. There are so many functionalities for these but i will just name two.
copy paste your UV Plane (for tiles etc) on a dummy non renderable box Rename them by giving them the name of the texture you tiled with it. You won't have to remember your values or try to match the tile later if you need to for any reason.
Very useful for complex environment models.
Copy Paste your Skin Modifier on a non renderable box and ,modify your object as you please. Then simply paste it on top after you are done. That pretty much is it! Do a quick last check IF you added any new verts on the areas that you added them..
SCENE STATES. scene states is a very useful feature that all lighting artists should love! It enables you to save different light orientations intensities, environment settings such as background for example, different materials all in one file, and manage them easily just by right clicking. This way you can create different moods or simply lighting setups in the same file without any trouble at all!
Enabling the Macro Recorder by right clicking on the maxscript toolbar allows you to drag and drop any function\s you performed on a toolbar and make a button out of it performing that function every time you press it.
Set your transformation axis to scene and set the pivot to be off the object (3rd option) to have a handy easy to use custom pivot point whenever you like it. Doesn't work for everything, but will cover most of your needs!
Use the Falloff map with Fresnel on self illumination channel to quickly and inexpensively fake a "skin" effect. Use your diffuse map in one of it's channels for added "cheap realism"
Create your favorite typical start up setup, and save it in the default scene folder as maxstart.max Or simply save the scene you're working on lately as maxstart.max in the same folder. Next time you start max it will automatically load it for you.
Use Edit>Hold \ Fetch to fix many visual glitches that might occur, OR keep an instant copy of your scene before you do something major. If you don't like the modification you made or it creates a problem that can't be undone... well fetch, and everything will be happy and jolly again
Tools>Snapshot will create hard copies of your animated(rigged) object at a specific frame.. or over a range generating multiple copies. Use the option Mesh if you only want that with no modifiers involved!
These last shortcuts and features are the reason why I am totally uninterested with Slate.
Press the left and right arrows while you are in a material to quickly move from, let's say, diffuse to opacity and any other maps you have applied, to change their settings. Press the Up arrow while you're at it, to go to the upper level. (it can't tell which one you are going down but going to diffuse first then cycle around would be nice and easy)
You can see the structure of your material in a Hierarchical mode easily by opening the Material\Map Navigator. This will also allow you to quickly navigate your maps as well as whatever you select automatically comes to the MatEd screen no matter how complex your material and it is far more tidy and organized than any nodal system.
Is it fancy ? No.
Is it fast and useful? Hell yeah!!!
There are so many more to be found, and i am sure that with so many experienced users of 3dsmax in here soon many will be added to the list.
I hope you found these useful!
These will be very useful especially for people who start getting into 3dsmax! Many might be surprising even to some who use max for a while.
I'll start by placing a few here, ofc there are many feel free to add your cool tip and keep it relevant!
Some useful shortcuts:
Shift+X enables Edge constraints.
V opens a view list to pick from.
Up arrow in a viewport enables the walk-through mode and brackets control its speed.
; repeats a command
flicking with RMB on the title of a quad enables the last accessed command
gc() typed in the maxScript slot cleans up your cache garbage.
? starts and stops playback in the active viewport.
N enables autokey
Alt+RMB opens a list where you can pick your transformation axis.
Shift +RMB allows you to quickly change your snap settings
Ctrl+C creates a camera on your perspective viewport looking exactly at what you are looking at that time!
Right click on your trackbar and "show Selection Ranges" so you can scale your keyframes easily. (or even reverse them)
press Q to cycle between selection modes (square, circular, polygonal, freehand lasso and paint)
Right Click on spinners to set them on their lowest value.
Ctrl+N to start a mini calculator that can paste the result as a value.
If you don't use the Track Bar.. well Hide it.. Customize>Show UI>Show Track Bar
Alt+Ctrl + *MB to drag on your Track Bar and interactively change the start\end frame (duration) or slide in a certain time bracket that you have set up by the amount of frames you see in your Track Bar (by default 100) over your entire animation time.
Some Useful Features:
Use "Collapse To" if you want to collapse your stack from a certain point downwards and keep the top intact (very useful if you have a skin modifier on top or any others you want to keep)
Copy\Paste\Rename Modifier these are a basic features that many people tend to forget or oversee. There are so many functionalities for these but i will just name two.
copy paste your UV Plane (for tiles etc) on a dummy non renderable box Rename them by giving them the name of the texture you tiled with it. You won't have to remember your values or try to match the tile later if you need to for any reason.
Very useful for complex environment models.
Copy Paste your Skin Modifier on a non renderable box and ,modify your object as you please. Then simply paste it on top after you are done. That pretty much is it! Do a quick last check IF you added any new verts on the areas that you added them..
SCENE STATES. scene states is a very useful feature that all lighting artists should love! It enables you to save different light orientations intensities, environment settings such as background for example, different materials all in one file, and manage them easily just by right clicking. This way you can create different moods or simply lighting setups in the same file without any trouble at all!
Enabling the Macro Recorder by right clicking on the maxscript toolbar allows you to drag and drop any function\s you performed on a toolbar and make a button out of it performing that function every time you press it.
Set your transformation axis to scene and set the pivot to be off the object (3rd option) to have a handy easy to use custom pivot point whenever you like it. Doesn't work for everything, but will cover most of your needs!
Use the Falloff map with Fresnel on self illumination channel to quickly and inexpensively fake a "skin" effect. Use your diffuse map in one of it's channels for added "cheap realism"
Create your favorite typical start up setup, and save it in the default scene folder as maxstart.max Or simply save the scene you're working on lately as maxstart.max in the same folder. Next time you start max it will automatically load it for you.
Use Edit>Hold \ Fetch to fix many visual glitches that might occur, OR keep an instant copy of your scene before you do something major. If you don't like the modification you made or it creates a problem that can't be undone... well fetch, and everything will be happy and jolly again
Tools>Snapshot will create hard copies of your animated(rigged) object at a specific frame.. or over a range generating multiple copies. Use the option Mesh if you only want that with no modifiers involved!
These last shortcuts and features are the reason why I am totally uninterested with Slate.
Press the left and right arrows while you are in a material to quickly move from, let's say, diffuse to opacity and any other maps you have applied, to change their settings. Press the Up arrow while you're at it, to go to the upper level. (it can't tell which one you are going down but going to diffuse first then cycle around would be nice and easy)
You can see the structure of your material in a Hierarchical mode easily by opening the Material\Map Navigator. This will also allow you to quickly navigate your maps as well as whatever you select automatically comes to the MatEd screen no matter how complex your material and it is far more tidy and organized than any nodal system.
Is it fancy ? No.
Is it fast and useful? Hell yeah!!!
There are so many more to be found, and i am sure that with so many experienced users of 3dsmax in here soon many will be added to the list.
I hope you found these useful!
Replies
Edit: I use the "Use selection center", "Use Pivot Point Center" on a daily basis. It is something ALOT of people forget to use, and it just works particularly well. It is used to select how objects will rotate and move when you have a bunch selected. It's a little hard to explain, but that brings me to my second point.
USE F1! It brings up max's help menu. VERY useful, and rarely used. It provides detailed explanations for everything 3ds Max.
Nice tips. Do you know if it is possible to disable this cycling behavior? I find that when I'm working my selection or scale tool frequently gets cycled to a different type by accident and its pretty annoying.
ohai
Q is assigned to "smart" selection by default, go to Customize/customize UI and assign it to Select Object and voil
Customize> Customize User Interface
Group: Main UI
Category: Selection
Action: Smart Select (click on it and then click on Remove)
Goes without saying from these dialogues you can change pretty much anything you want.
just click on the list of actions and start typing the name of what you are looking for.
"Write Keyboard Chart" will give you the entire list of Keyboard Shortcuts in a text file.
When saving a file pressing the + sign will add a number increment next to it (e.g. normal.max will be normal01.max).
Press the "i" key to re-center the view where the cursor is. Good for working zoomed in when you need to go outside the viewport. Very useful for spline creation.
Press "g" to toggle the grid in the viewport.
Numbers 1-5 will select components, 6 will exit sub-object mode (poly)
j- will remove the annoying bounding box
Press '7' to toggle HUD Statistics. Right click viewport title, and go to Configure and click the Statistics tab to customize this.
+ = grow manipulator
- = shrink manipulator
x = hide manipulator
F1: Opens the help window.
F2: when you have a selection of Patch\Polygon sub-objects it switches the display of selected sub-objects between shaded and wireframe.
F3: switches the display of a wireframe viewport to shaded, and vice versa; really useful.
F4: switches a simple shaded viewport to edged faced, and vice versa; useful again!
F5: chooses the X dimension for Transform operations (Move, Rotate, Scale).
F6: chooses the Y dimension for Transform operations (Move, Rotate, Scale).
F7: chooses the Z dimension for Transform operations (Move, Rotate, Scale).
F8: Switches between XY, YZ, XZ planes for transform Operations (Move, Rotate, Scale).
F9: Renders the viewport according to the last assigned options for render dialog; very useful.
F10: opens the Render Dialog; very useful.
F11: opens the MAXscript listener dialog.
F12: opens the Type-In dialog for Transform operations (Move, Rotate , Scale) .
Shift+F = show safe frame
Shift+4 = view where light is pointing (only when using spots or directionals)
Shift+i = Spacing tool
Shift+( w, p, s, c, h, g, L ) toggle hide (space warps, particle systems, shapes, cameras, helpers, geometry, and lights)
Alt+q = isolation mode
Alt+a = align tool
Alt+x = see through selected object
Alt+n = normal align
Ctrl+e = toggle between scale modes
Ctrl+i = invert selection
Ctrl+L = activate-deactivate lights in the viewport
Ctrl+F = toggle between selection method
Ctrl+D = deselect all
Ctrl+v = clone floater
Ctrl+c = move the camera to match the perspective view
Alt+6 = toggle the main toolbar on/off
Ctrl+x = expert mode
Drag left edge of Command panel to expand it. You can have up to 4 columns to see all the parameters without going up and down.
By right clicking on the time slider you can keyframe your selected objects. A pop-up box allows you to specify a move, rotate, or transform key.
To make multiple shapes all one shape without attaching them, turn off Start New Shape on the Create panel. Then create your shapes. The software adds each spline to the current shape until you click the Start New Shape button so that it's turned on.
"Dragging text to a toolbar to make a button from the listener is good, dragging text from the Maxscript window is nice. Dragging text from your internet browser is awesome "
When you are selecting, hiding, or freezing objects by name, you can press the * button before the name and it will select any objects with that name anywhere in it. You can also stack them to get a more specific name by having multiple *'s. like *bolt*nut... This would only select an object that has both bolt and nut in its name. For example, if you type *bolt it will select objects named:
-engineblockbolt
-nutsandbolts
-gasketbolt
When in sub object mode select vertex, polys or whatever and make them a "named selection set" to create clusters. Edit Selection Sets from menu: Edit > Edit Named Selection Sets. Use selection sets if you have made a time consuming selection of polys, enter a name into the selection set combo box in the top toolbar. Now you can reselect these polys at any time by looking up this selection set from the combo box. It works on all levels I believe; objects, elements, polys, edges, etc. You will have to be in the appropriate level to see your selection set.
Custom model in the Material Editior: Sometimes we need to see how light affects texturing of an specific object:
1 Save the scene with a single model (your custom model)
2 Open a new scene and open material editor (m) (or u can do this in the same scene)
3 Press (o) to bring up the options while in material editor
4 In the custom sample object load the scene with your model
5 Back in material editor, in the sample type icon press and hold and select the one with the ? sign
Now your custom model is in the materials editor samples instead of the classic sphere, you can also select in the options to load your camera so the model doesnt appear too small or too big, You can right click the material slot and select "drag / rotate" to orbit your model.
[FONT="]Will stop now, but I have loads more.
[/FONT]
This ^ is something I often miss in other applications, love it!
EDIT:
When using the paint tool (paint weights, paint vertex colors ect...)
- Ctrl+Shift+LMB Drag changes the brushes size
- Alt+Shift+LMB Drag changes the brush strength
- Hold Alt to reverse the strength
V will do a quick preview of the motion on a biped (with Keyboard Shortcut Override turned on and a biped piece selected)
Xview
Save the layout of track views by right clicking a blank spot and choose save layout.
Configure modifier buttons
I'll write more if I get time later this weekend.
And btw Yiannisk, would you mind to compile useful tips and update it on first post so it's more organized?
Thank you for this great thread
but all you need to do is click on the arrow (or plane) and drag.
I would have no problem consolidating, and thank you for liking it
The only thing is for everyone to try and keep this thread clean and relevant.
Right click on the snap icon for settings dialog, right click on any transform icon for the transform-type-in dialog, right click of any of the time-modifying icons (e.g. Play) for settings.
Projecting a spline onto a mesh: Create a mesh, and a spline to be projected. Select the mesh and go to Compound Objects > ShapeMerge > Pick Shape, and select your Spline. Check the cookie cutter option if you want to make a hole. The projected curve is by default an instance of the original spline. Be advised, this can get messy. Treat it like booleans and watch how the spline aligns to the mesh.
When creating splines, press "backspace" to remove the last point created.
File > Archive > Archive (or whatever 2010 has replaced it with) will create a .zip archive of your max file and all bitmaps, etc.
In viewport configuration, check DISPLAY SELECTED w/ EDGED FACES and turn off EDGED FACES in all viewports if you only want the selected object to display edged faces. Might speed things up on high poly scenes.
- Hold shift and right click on a spinner to set a keyframe for that spinner value.
- Holding ctrl and dragging a spinner will increase it a lot, holding alt will increase it a little. This also works for panning and zooming in viewports.
- Holding shift while panning or arc-rotating around an object will constrain it to either vertical or horizontal depending on which way the cursor is moved.
- In the trackview, in the key stats section where it tells you what the selected key(s) time and value are, you can type "n" and then a "+","-","*" or "/" and then a number in either of those field to relatively add, subtract, multiply or divide by amounts for the time and/or value of the selected keys (eg. to move your selected keys 20 frames later, in the time field of the key stats type n+20)
- You can move toolbar buttons around in the UI by holding down alt and dragging them around (dragging them to the viewport will ask whether you wish to remove it).
- To make flat objects you can still deform (eg. leaves), don't extrude splines with grid turned on in the capping options. Create a plane and then use the spline as a cookie cutter. The grid can still be subdivided however you wish and then solidified with the shell modifier.
- Time tags can be very helpful to organize your animation by adding descriptions to your scene's timeline. To add one, simply click where it says "add time tag" to the left of the big key button down the bottom. If you right-click on this box you get a flyout with options to add, edit or goto time tags. This is a very handy way to create shortcuts to important and frequently used frames in your time range.
- In the trackview, holding alt and right clicking in the hierarchy list brings up the old trackview right click menu (ie. the one that give you the option to select and expand tracks).
To chamfer an edge in Editable Poly mode and still keep the original edge just use Extrude instead. Bring up the dialog box and set the Extrusion Height to zero. Now you can adjust the Extrusion Base Width and it acts just like a chamfer, but keeps the original edge.
You can scale multiple selected keys below the trackbar without opening the trackview by RMB+click on it, select configure, and check show selection range.
You can also duplicate keys below the trackbar. Select any number of keys, once they turn white, you can SHIFT drag those keys to clone them.
Ctrl-PgDown = Shrink and Ctrl-PgUp = Grow for hotkeys in EditPoly.
For large objects like skydomes tick 'Object Properties - ignore extents' then when you 'zoom extents' it won't fly out a million miles.
If you lose a window off screen (doesn't come up with you press the taskbar button):
1) Click on the button to activate the window.
2) Press Alt + Spacebar and select Move from the menu (don't try to move it yet).
3) Press any one of the arrow keys to attach the window to the mouse.
4) Use the mouse to position the window on the screen.
5) Exit max to save the screen position.
This works for other Windows apps as well.
You can copy/paste the base level of your stack (Editable Mesh, Editable Poly, primitives, etc) from one object to another in trackview. This is not allowed in the command panel, so most people assume it cannot be done at all.
If you turn off "show end result" in the Material Editor and Right-Click on the current material slot, you get an option to "Render Map". The following dialog will allow you to bake out the current navigation level in the shader to a new bitmap. This is very handy for consolidating many blended or mixed textures into a single image (thus saving memory), baking out any offset & tiling of a texture, turning a 3d procedural into a 2d image, etc. It can come in handy for many situations. It even works with animated textures.
STL Check: If you want to check for Open Edges, Spikes, Multiple Edges or Multiple Faces, apply an STL Check modifier to your mesh and it will highlight these mesh issues. Just make sure that you have no sub-object selections before you apply the modifier because it'll highlight those too and you won't be able to tell what is and isn't an error. If your mesh is densely detailed, switching to wireframe helps you spot highlighted errors.
The preset render sizes that are on the render panel are configurable. Right click on the one you want to change and a dialogue box pops up to let you change them.
Still more to come.
*EDIT* Add "r" before any numerical value you've entered into a spinner, to add it to the previous value.
So, if your object is at 5 on the X axis, do an "r5" in the move input on X, and it'll move to 10.
Good for offsetting, nudging, incremental changes.
1. Try not to cast shadows using omni lights; they are equivalent to placing 6 spotlights with a 90 degree field of view.
2. If youre rendering a scene with a lot of lights dont try and set them up all at once. Use Tools>Light Lister to turn off all your lights the scene then work on one light at a time.
3 Right click on the name of the viewport, go to views and select your light, You can see exactly what your light sees. Adjust the falloff of each light so that it just fills your scene. That way you wont waste time casting rays of into space, and your shadow maps will be efficiently used.
Right click on the little light bulb in the modifier stack, to bring up a useful little menu.
For edge loops in complicated areas, select the polygons of the desired area and use quickslice.
You can make every material in the scene emit more light than its maximum value (past the 100% self illumination) by dropping an output map into the diffuse slot and then increasing the RGB level and the output.
Use Google to look for an image, and then drag the image directly into a map slot. It will automatically import it. You can even drag bitmaps from your desktop or folders onto specific sub objects (faces) and you will have a multi-sub object material if you use the eyedropper in the material editor.
Do you want to make your Quad Menu transparent so you can see objects behind it? First, go to Customize > Customize User Interface > in Quads section, click Advanced Options. There, decrease the Opacity Amount from 100 to 85 to get a nice transparent menu.
Holding down CTRL when creating certain primitives, like spheres, lets you rotate them as you create them.
When doing a flatten UVW unwrap, first apply an angle of 45, then apply another flatten mapping at an angle 0f 61. This gives a good base to work from.
UVW Unwrap: use Display > Show Edge Distortion to get visual feedback when manipulating UVs. The edges turn bright green if they are the proper length, red if they are not.
You can ustomize your interface so that the number pad is used to control your views, i.e., 8=top, 2=bottom, 4=left, 5=Perspective, 6=right, etc.
On the Plane object use the "Render multipliers setting to make an "infinite plane" or even ground with detailed displacement map (by using density value) without affecting performance of viewports.
Using the layer manager and object properties menu it is possible to get more than one shading type at the same time in the viewport. Like a model sheet in shade mode and the model in wireframe. Just go over a layer on layer Manager, and enter on the layer properties. There you will find a Display parameter, where you will choose from a list the display type desired for that group. To see the result in the viewport, make sure that your objects have the display properties (over object properties), set to: "by Layer."
When you need to collapse your stack very often, but do not want to set up your modifiers again and again, you can "copy" them by right clicking them. Then they are in the clipboard and can be applied again, by pasting into the modifier stack.
So far nothing new...but when you restart max, your clipboard is empty...
So to prevent the loss of your modifiers (or even whole stacks) just set up a "stackholder" for doing so. Just copy all your modfiers you will need again in the near future onto a box, or any other primitive. Then save, so they remain in the scene, when restarting max. You can even "rename" the modifiers in your stack, so that you can better navigate them, when you have many of them.
In your shortcut properties to the exe add "-l" and it will always open the last file you had opened
example: 3dsmax.exe -l
This is really good when you can't remember what you were working on.
There are other command line options, but be careful.
Click and hold the play button and a popup menu with two options will show up, the first is the default playback, which will allow you to view the animation of all the objects in the scene and the second will allow you to view the animation of only the selected object; very handy for large scenes.
SHAPE view. It lets you move a shape by moving the view but not the selected shape. Right click on the viewport label and select VIEWS > SHAPE. It does not transform the shape, only the view that is linked to it.
In Unwrap UVW, in Face mode, use Select > Select Overlapped Faces and Select Inverted Faces to spot problems.
In the Object Color menu, uncheck Assign Random Color, and pick the color you want all newly created objects to have.
If you like the old version of the select dialogue (h- key), you can activate it in the default .ini file.
C : Documents and Settings\BLABLABLA\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsmax\2009 - 32bit\enu\defaults\MAX\CurrentDefaults.ini
Code:
[Scene Explorer]
SelectByNameUsesSceneExplorer=0
set 1 for the default scene explorer or 0 for old version.
You can sample more than just the colors within the Color Selector.
Hold down the left mouse button in the Hue / Blackness panel and move the mouse anywhere - right outside of max. If you don't have the max window maximized you sample from any window or even your desktop should you feel the need!
In animation, rather than use the Trajectories in the Motion Panel, RMB click the object being animated and check Trajectory.