max tips & tricks

[gilicom]

Hi guys & gals , i thought that it would be nice if each one of you would tell us somthing that exists in max in we didn't know about it, somthing that will make our work easyer.
I'll start with 2 things :
1. when you draw a spline you can press i while drawing the line to switch to interactive mode (try it).
2. press ctrl + n will open a calculator that you can paste from (very usefull for sec = > frames count).

lets see what all u experts got for us...
gili

[vlado]

Re: max tips & tricks

2. press ctrl + n will open a calculator that you can paste from (very usefull for sec = > frames count).gili

I've wanted for this for quite some time... didn't know it was there already, so I've been using the MaxScript Listener window... Thanks for the tip!

Best regards,
Vlado

[gilicom]

vlado you need to give us also a tip even if you think that they prob know it...

[trixian]

Ctrl-n is the shortcut for new scene on my machine.

[gilicom]

put your mouse on the frame number and then try

[Candelero]

"X" button - tip... hides and shows the gizmo...

[Dynedain]

If you have an object and your points all need to be in the same plane (like say a wall where the top face has gotten distorted and the points aren't all at the same height anymore) you can select all those points, and scale by 0% the dimension you want them aligned in. So in the case of this wall, select all the top faces, scale by 0% in the Z, and they will all be perfectly ligned up and ready to be put in the right Z location.

To easily get to the type-in transform box (for move, rotate, scale) you can right-click on any of those tools from the top toolbar.

[percydaman]

Re: max tips & tricks

Hi guys & gals , i thought that it would be nice if each one of you would tell us somthing that exists in max in we didn't know about it, somthing that will make our work easyer.
I'll start with 2 things :
1. when you draw a spline you can press i while drawing the line to switch to interactive mode (try it).
2. press ctrl + n will open a calculator that you can paste from (very usefull for sec = > frames count).

lets see what all u experts got for us...
gili

what version? for me ctrl+n tries to start a new max file.

[Dynedain]

Re: max tips & tricks

Hi guys & gals , i thought that it would be nice if each one of you would tell us somthing that exists in max in we didn't know about it, somthing that will make our work easyer.
I'll start with 2 things :
1. when you draw a spline you can press i while drawing the line to switch to interactive mode (try it).
2. press ctrl + n will open a calculator that you can paste from (very usefull for sec = > frames count).

lets see what all u experts got for us...
gili

what version? for me ctrl+n tries to start a new max file.

I believe you need to have a value type-in field activated (you've clicked your mouse in it)

[percydaman]

ahhh thanks....got it.

[Morbid Angel]

good topic here is few of ours:

1 - To dynamicly work with modifiers you can drag and drop modifiers from one object to another. I.e. you have cube 1 and cube 2, cube 1 has meshSmooth on it, you can click and drag meshSmooth onto cube 2 and it will be copied there. You can hold down ctrl + drag will instace the modifier, shit+drag will move the modifier from one object to another.

2 - in mat editor you can rotate a shader by mmb clicking and draging on it.

3 - if you select a file from explorrer and drag/drop it onto mat editor shader slot it will add it into diffuse channel.

4 - You can drag any texture maps from explorrer into any mat editor slots, with out having to go and click (channel/bitmap/brows for bitmap)

5 - this one is a rather warning for max 7 users: did you know that if you instance a map in one mat two or more times, then click make unique button it will destroy the shader.

6 - Reactor dynamics: when you are trying to simulate two objects which have to look like they are side by side and reactor gives warrning of object intersecting, put a push modifier with a small value of -0.05 to shrink the objects temporarily, after the simulation you can turn off the push modifier and have everything looking correctly and colliding.

7 - Did you know that by default settings quasi monte carlo for primary bounce ( will render slower and more graynier image then if you turn up global QMC sampler subdivision to 4 (cleaner and faster). And making quasi for secondary bounce (exterrior) will make it render even faster, and even faster with global subdivisions to 4.

8 - did you know that 3ds max maximum frame range in time slider is -10000 to 10000.

9 - Particle flow is terrible with max collision objects, avoid using heavy instaced objects colliding, this will result it horrible render times due to PF precalculations. Making PF cache to disk will make 3dmax files aroun 600 mb and still wont be anywhere near as helpful as one would want.

10 - Did you know that while working in editable poly mode ctrl + I (invert selection) does not work, but it works fine if you go edit/selection invert.

11 - I find very useful using blur scripts, in particular one called clear medit, which clears all the shaders from mat editor (while keeping the in the scene)

12 - Did you know that MeshSmooth will crash max at level 7 subdivision and TurboSmooth will still render all though at 2.5 gb of ram, but it will be fast and efficient. So since turbo smooth showed up I dont use meshsmooth that often. (test done on a primitive sphere renderer on mental ray)

13 - Did you know that procedural textures in vrayDisplacement Mod will render much slower then baked textures.

14 - Vray Adaptive Subdivision will fail to anti aliase heavily detailed objects with motion blur. By heavy detail I mean 3 million + tiny objects. (space ship in my case) But fixed rate will do a fine job :P

15 - attaching multiple heavy objects in 3ds max via editable mesh/poly will perform a memory leak which will force max to jump the memory to maximum then crash. (test is done by cloning 100 (100x100) spheres and attaching them all in one batch. While if you attach them one by one your memory will grow exponentially, but you will be able to attache an nth number of them then save, close max open max and continue. (maya can do this attachement with memory under 900mb)

16 - Vray does not motion blur any light types, so if you have heavy motion in your scene which depends on precision lighting, do not use lights, rather use gi emmited objects.

17 - Vray does not motion blur lights thus does not motion blur any volumetric effects corelated to lights. Solution is to use camera multipass effect with duration corresponding to you motion blur to render a separate pass.

18 - Vray has hard time motion bluring particles which spawn and die between frames. If the blur is not too heavy you can use 2d effects motion blur, works well.

19 - Vray cannot motion blur Fluids like realFlow mesh or Glue3d, again 2d blur would work for some cases.

20 - when rendering single objects or passes like shadows use region to cut down on antialiasing of black unnesesserry space. Just make sure your object does not exit the region on a sertain frame.
Hope that helps some one out there

[jujubee]

Wow guys that is great. Thanks Morbid for the tips!

[Tog]

5 - this one is a rather warning for max 7 users: did you know that if you instance a map in one mat two or more times, then click make unique button it will destroy the shader.

Discovered yesterday

[Da_elf]

i work in editable poly mode all the time and i use crtl I all the time. usually when im setting mat ID's if i select the ones i want and type in mat ID1 then try to do ctrl I it wont work, thats becasue you have the ID1 selected still (usually its highlighted blue) click on the clear spot right to the left of Mat ID so it deselects the number then ctrl I works.

[Morbid Angel]

da_elf, hmm strange, I just tested it and yeah it works, but I clearly remember it not working and it had not to do with id's or maybe it did?