3D Studio Max: Random tips & tricks

[Razorwing]

Here's something I wish I learned a looong time ago.

If you have a mesh with many materials - which you should have since it's a good idea to attach everything and weld the vertices before exporting - it's extremely easy to select the polygons for respective material. You only want one material per strip, anything else is unoptimized. The exception is if you want special behavior, like having part of a material being doublesided. It's easy to get duplicated materials if for instance you bring in model parts from different max scenes.

Select the mesh. Unroll the Editable Mesh modifier and choose the Polygon sub-object. In the modifiers rollout, scroll down near the bottom and unroll the Surface Properties section. Under the rectangle entitled Material you'll see a drop-down list. Select one to select all the polygons of a particular material.

There's another way to do it, which is to use the dipper in the material editor to import the composite map -- but if you have a mesh with a lot of duplicated materials, selecting the polygons like I mentioned has proved a far superior method to me personally.

[nick_op]

Here's a rather obscure bit of functionality that I've found quite handy:

With a mesh you can undo any unwanted changes (and redo them if desired) with CTRL+Z and CTRL+Y. Now, before someone chimes in here with a resounding 'DUH!' , I'll get to the point: you can also undo and redo changes to your viewports. Accidentally rotated your viewport intead of panning it? SHIFT+Z will undo that. You can also redo any viewport changes with SHIFT+Y.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by nick_op
Here's a rather obscure bit of functionality that I've found quite handy:

With a mesh you can undo any unwanted changes (and redo them if desired) with CTRL+Z and CTRL+Y. Now, before someone chimes in here with a resounding 'DUH!' , I'll get to the point: you can also undo and redo changes to your viewports. Accidentally rotated your viewport intead of panning it? SHIFT+Z will undo that. You can also redo any viewport changes with SHIFT+Y.

That can be handy to know, thanks for submitting your tip!

I often find myself wanting to press the C key to center the viewport to my model like I can in the Construction Set, but of course that doesn't work I should take some time to research how I can tweak the UI to enable that.

[nick_op]

Originally posted by Razorwing
That can be handy to know, thanks for submitting your tip!

I often find myself wanting to press the C key to center the viewport to my model like I can in the Construction Set, but of course that doesn't work I should take some time to research how I can tweak the UI to enable that.

The default key for that is Z. Go to Customise->Customise User Interface and look for 'zoom extents selected' - that's what you want to assign the key to.

[Razorwing]

This tip is a little fuzzy, and I'm not 100% sure about it either, but here goes.

Be careful when using the Skin modifier.

I was having trouble exporting a model I animated and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it wouldn't export properly, neither animation nor havok. I racked my head for awhile and then figured I'd have a try at unticking the skin options on the max exporter window. And voila, it exported properly. I haven't had that particular problem before, and this is the only scene ever where I've had a mesh with a skin modifier on it. It gets even weirder since if I recall correctly that mesh was no longer in the scene.



Another tip:
As handy as the niftools shader is, the civ4 exporter doesn't understand it. If you try to export materials that use the niftools shader, your uvw mapping won't export. Just change the shader to CivilizationIV Shader (or Blinn) and it'll export fine.

[xchaosdragon666x]

Most Likly Common Knowledge but to turn triangle to quads is easy.

Go to Face selection
Use Face Selection then use slice plane to create extra edges

Then go to edge selection select the edge and find the "remove" button

Go to vertex selection and click a vertex that isnt connecting lines then click remove


Pro's
+Cut's Down on poly's
+Reduces file size
+Makes it easier to edit & Texture
+Reduces chance of texture stretch's Assuming your not using uvwmap
+Looks professional

Con's
-Take's time

This was mainly hidden faces but quite a few triangles that were hidden

Example


If someone knows quicker way let me and others know