3ds Max tricks

pc-crash

Hey guys,
i use 3ds max for quite some time now and i am searching for more advanced technics and tricks.
Sadly my company is not working with 3d studio, so i am looking for all the small tricks and shortcuts which you would get when your coworker walks by and just say "hey ever tried it this way?".  Rigging, animating, modeling, usefull plugins, anything is cool.  Dont get me wrong here, i am not looking for the holy grale in 3ds max. I know nothing can beat hard work and trial and error. But i hope some of you can hit me in the right direction or give me some complete new perspective on this topic.

Eric Chadwick

We have some things here on the wiki
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Tools#3ds_Max

What kind of work do you do? Characters? Animation? Environments? FX?

monster

In general modeling tools and the Modifier Stack are the selling point for Max. To me at least, List Controllers are just as important as the modifier stack for animation and rigging.

pc-crash

I checked  many of the wiki tuts. I do a lot of Enviromental work. Sometimes Characters.  I am not trying to improve my artwork directly at the moment ( on the long run its all about improving the art of course). Its more about improving my skillset on the toolset itself. One example of stuff i am looking for would be the procedural stone modeling tutorial from Sascha Henrichs. Its an different, more technical aproach to the modeling of a stone. I am searching for all the thinks you can do outside of the "normal" workflow. I hope you could understand what i mean.

Eric Chadwick

If you search the wiki for Henrichs you'll find it.

Eric Chadwick

As far as finding tricks, one of the nicest ways I've found is to pick a part of Max and learn what it does. The Tools menu for example.

The Array tool was super useful on several jobs, creating seating in a theater. Then for a curved theater I discovered the Spacing tool, to instance meshes along a curving spline.

All that by looking in the menu, reading the Help for one of them, and experimenting with the tool. Not useful right away, but the memory is jogged later, when I have a specific need in the heat of production. 

Then, knowing what built in features do what, I know when to search Scriptspot or Maxplugins for a needed extension.

pc-crash

Thank you for your help. I will try that.