3d studio max 8 questions.
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Hello, after 8 years of using Maya I must use max for exactly one product cycle [insert sarcastic comment here]. I've got the draster plugin working and that is a huge help using the app and now I'm moving on to basic skills so I'll be posting questions in here frequently as you guys all own when it comes to Max. First question.
1. I would like to turn off use selection brackets in all the viewports and have this setting stick around, is there any way to do this? It keeps coming back every time I restart the app.
1. I would like to turn off use selection brackets in all the viewports and have this setting stick around, is there any way to do this? It keeps coming back every time I restart the app.
Replies
2. How do I move the pivot point of the model, in maya I would just hold down the d key and move or snap the pivot.
you can moving pivot by moving the mesh in Object mode under Edit Poly/Mesh or go to the Heirarchy Tab in the Pivot panel and turn on Affect Pivot only, that lets you directly manipulate the pivot of the model.
Max9 and above has something about specifying arbitrary pivot for rotating; I think JJTools has something similar as well.
3. How do I center the pivot?
Awesome got it pivot point moved mapped to d.
3. How do I center the pivot?
[/ QUOTE ] Hirearchy tab, affect pivot only, center to object.
[ QUOTE ]
4. any way to turn on backface culling but still see the wireframe of the whole model?
[/ QUOTE ]Backface culling is for shaded/flat shaded view. Think of it as turning on/off 2 sided faces.
[ QUOTE ]
5. any way to toggle between flat shaded and wireframe and map this to a hot key, I've found toggle shaded and wireframe but not flat lit and wireframe.
[/ QUOTE ] I think its 1,2,3, or F1, F2, F3 to toggle between those types of views.
You can edit the hotkeys to make F3 toggle between wireframe/faceted or wireframe/smooth shaded, just open Customize -> Customize User Interface and look in the Keyboard tab, hit F3 in the "hotkey" field on the right.
You'll see it's currently assigned to Wireframe/Smooth+Highlights Toggle.
If you select the Action list on the left and type "wire" it'll bring you to the full list of wireframe/etc. toggles. Just assign whatever keys you want there.
Regarding question 7: What do you mean by the "red icon" - you mean it's highlighting the whole selected face red? You can toggle that on and off while you're extruding (or at any time really) by hitting F2, it's the default hotkey to toggle "Shade Selected Faces", which I think is what you're talking about.
8. Where is the polycount display so I can see how many verts I have selected?
However if you really want to see the backfaces of wireframes, you have to turn off Backface Culling On Object Creation (located in Customize -> Preferences -> Viewports tab). If you've already created an object, just righ-click on it and go to Properties, and un-check Backface Cull.
If this doesn't do what you want then I'm not quite sure what you're after, or why you'd need it. I've been modelling in max for years with backface culling turned on, and I can't remember a single instance of this ever meaning I missed any mesh/normals errors.
Regarding your question 8: You can toggle a viewport display of triangle count by pressing 7 (I think this might actually be assigned to count "polys" instead of "tris" by default, if this is the case then assign the hotkey 7 to "Triangle Counter" using Customize User Interface).
You can see how many verts you have selected in the right panel (Editable Poly, Selection rollout, the one at the top). If you have one vert selected it will tell you the vertex number, more than one and it will tell you how many you have.
I think Juan Martinez (monster on these forums) wrote a Maxscript that works more like Maya's heads-up display to show tris/edges/verts in the viewport, maybe hit up his site for that.
Edit: I misinterpreted your question 9, I'll do a little checking and get back to you on that.
10. How do I turn off the grid in the uv editor, it is blue and makes it hard to see what I'm doing I don't use the grid in maya either.
However, you might want to check the box in the "Selection" rollout of the Editable Poly in the modify panel, that says "Ignore Backfacing". That way you won't be able to select verts that are facing away from the viewport. However you will still be able to select verts that are facing the viewport but are "behind" objects in your view.
In response to your question 10, you can fully customise the grid (and element) colours of the UV editor by going Options -> Advanced Options in the Edit UVWs window. There's a checkbox for "Show Grid" near the top where the colours are. The default colours are pretty stupid though, I always change them to a fairly neutral grey scheme with low contrast grid. You can set the grid spacing there too.
Edit: For your "vertex snapping" question, I'd probably just select all the verts I want to snap to a particular position, hit Collapse (bind a hotkey to Collapse since it's so useful), then just snap or target weld the resultant single vertex.
There might be a way to do what you want natively, but I couldn't find it.
Something worth bearing in mind is that while you might love Maya and be used to its workflows, it's worthwhile to approach things from a different angle rather than trying to shoehorn all of your Maya workflows into the Max software. I tried that for a while when I was using Maya for a year and I had a much easier time when I just forgot all of the Max-specific workflow stuff and just got used to the way the Maya tools worked. It often works faster that way than trying to find ways to exactly replicate a different package's workflow. Then again you probably already know that
It should be dark grey though I think, does your monitor need calibrating (or does mine?!)?
Also you should play around with the "Freeform Transform" mode in the UVW editor, I don't think Maya has a manipulator like this, it works like Photoshop's free transform, pretty handy for quickly lining up extents and scaling a whole UV shell while keeping a corner or side locked.
When I need to align things quickly in Max I just use view align. It works by selecting a viewport and pressing the view align button after your make the selection. Collapse on edges behaves a little differently but in a good way. For example if you want to rid of few edge rings if you collapse them they will form a loop instead of collapse to one vert, so it make optimizing a model pretty easy when you want to average things out rather than just removing them at the spot they were in.
10. How do I turn off the grid in the uv editor, it is blue and makes it hard to see what I'm doing I don't use the grid in maya either.
To turn off that annoying grid, open the unwrap modifier go under preferences and there is a toggle for grid. turn it off. When you are done setting this to however you I suggest you go under options and select the save current savings as default, or you'll have to set up changes next time you start out max. Another thing you can do with it is lower the saturation of the color and change the color so it blends more with the uv window, since sometimes it's useful to have.
Alex
Changing the hotkey for Undo should also affect the Unwrap UVW editor.
If it doesn't, that probably means that you have the same key assigned in the Unwrap UVW hotkey section. I'm assuming you re-mapped undo to Z. By default Z is set to toggle "Zoom" mode in UVW editor, so that will override the main scene command in this case.
To fix it, go to Customize -> Customize User Interface, in the Keyboard tab, select "Unwrap UVW" from the "Group" drop-down list at the top, hit Z in the "hotkey" field on the right and it should say that it's assigned to Zoom. Select "Zoom" in the Action list and click "Remove" on the right to remove the Z hotkey. Then your undo should work fine.
In response to question 12:
You don't "convert" a single vert selection to a shell like you would in Maya. Instead Max has a toggle for "select by element", which means that whatever vert/edge/poly you click on, it will select the whole shell attached to that vert. I have it bound to "ALT-S" so I can toggle the shell-selection mode on and off while working.
If you want to hotkey it, go to Customize -> Customize User Interface, Keyboard tab, select "Unwrap UVW" from the "Group" drop-down list at the top, then look for TV Element Mode in the Action list and assign your hotkey to that.
I also recommend assigning your other Unwrap UVW hotkeys in the same area, for example all of the "TV Edge/Face/Vertex Sub-Object" mode, you can assign to number keys or F8-F10 whatever.
Similarly the "Texture Vertex Move/Rotate/Scale" mode hotkeys I would assign to whatever you have set in the main UI too. For example I use Q W E to toggle move/rotate/scale.
Yeah mine is dark blue, too bad I can't change the colour then I would just blend it in with the background.
[/ QUOTE ] Oh but you can. UVW Editor > Options > preferences > under the show grid check box, adjust the color until it fades away. Kind of weird you didn't already tweak that? Maybe you thought the other bright blue box was the bounding box?
Heh it looks like Mop beat me to it. If you hold ctrl and select a sub object it converts your selection if you have the chuggnut unwrap tools, pretty handy.
Alex
Alex
You can try this if you feel, but I think it's a bit over the top. You can make a reference of your object. Then apply a wire material to the reference and turn off back face cull for that object. select the color you want the wire to be. Link it to the object you are going to model with, then freeze it. Go under the properties of the unfrozen object and turn on back face cull. If you move scale your object the frozen one will follow. The big draw back will be performance at some point and every time you collapse the stack you'll have to redo the setup.
Alex
Alex
How do you allow geometry with a self illumination map to emit light? I've been able to do this in quake 2 editors in the past. I've tried following the Max user reference in conjunction with radiosity and using Advanced Lighting Override Material. For some reason, it's not working for me. Any help would be great!
18. I've got the maxstart file working so it sets my working units but after Ctrl + n for new scene it does not load the file any way to get the file to work as a new scene as well?