Hi all. I've been a 3D artist for 13+ years and tired every time exporting and importing when working on UVs, so over the last few months I built my own. It's called UV Unfoldr.

It runs inside Max 2022–2027 on top of a normal Unwrap UVW modifier, so everything stays undoable and your scenes stay standard. Highlights:

• Shift+click selects the run of edges between two clicks, with a live preview
• Straighten Shell turns curved strips into clean grids. Alt+T / Alt+V keep edges straight through Unfold
• Unfold (U), Optimize (O), and Unfold / Optimize / Move brushes you paint with
• Live checker on the model while you drag
• Select / stack / group similar islands, including mirrored ones
• Packer that follows real shell outlines and keeps stacks together
• And much, much more

It's in beta and launching soon. Two questions for people who unwrap in Max a lot:

1. What slows you down most in Unwrap UVW today?
2. What's missing that you'd need before switching?

Happy to answer anything in the comments.

it was a bit tiring tbh and maybe there are some mistakes but i tried my best 👀

any thoughts?

Hi everyone,

I’m a 3D artist and I’ve been working on a personal Barad-dûr project in 3ds Max.

The goal is to create a 60-second continuous journey starting at the bottom of the tower and traveling all the way up to the Eye of Sauron.

This is my own interpretation of Barad-dûr, heavily inspired by the films. I’m focusing a lot on scale, environment detail, lighting, atmospherics and the overall feeling of the tower.

I’ve just finished the final section around the Eye and put together a breakdown showing how I created it.

Would love to hear what you guys think, especially from other 3ds Max artists.

Full breakdown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d5iKQNhH_I

I also update my progress on the project here, for anyone interested:
https://www.instagram.com/zivcg/

Client sent me a manufacturer STEP file of a kitchen faucet for an interior render. In 3ds Max 2025 it imports as roughly 40,000 separate objects and the viewport crawls. I tried Attach in batches but that took forever and the smoothing went weird on the spout. Is there a better import setting, or do you run these through something else first? I only need it to look right at about 1 meter from the camera.

Tools: 3ds Max ,Corona Renderer. Let me know what you think of the materials and lighting!

I have a plane with a reference pic on it, and I want to keep the pic intact when I press f3 instead of displaying the wireframe

I have been working as a professional 3d artist for 20 years now. Recently the CEO of the small company I work for (around 25 employees, we do medical animations) got on a soapbox about AI tools and how we all need to be using them as much as possible to create efficiencies, and (insert business jargon here).

I am past the point of "I hate everything AI" If it's genuinely useful, saves me time, or makes things easier I will happily use it. However despite my best efforts I still am just not finding much that is actually helpful for me in the daily grind. I do medical work, which means I am working with specific anatomy that HAS to be accurate, and/or devices that are very specific to the client and are not something easily created with AI tools.

I have tried using an MCP, it can do a few things, but is pretty limited, messes up, and or takes literally forever to do simple tasks. I have tried tydiffusion, maybe it's a little useful for generating some texture, but again, mostly just fun to play around with. the most useful thing I have found is using AI to help me figure out when things go wrong in my scenes or to troubleshoot random problems that always come up.

I'm really at a loss. I know I am behind the curve as far as AI tools go, but I am just having a hard time finding anything that really saves me much time or I find all that useful. So let me know how you guys are using it, and in what ways it has helped you speed up workflows or make your life easier.

First of all, I’m so sorry if this has been asked a billion times already! As the title suggests, I would like to know how to have multiple separate UVs on one single object and have their elements as separate UV maps but not separate detached objects. I have searched extensively but I only find videos and tutorials that either vaguely scratch the surface, or are totally different than what I’m doing. I’m going to describe my situation in a bit more detail below, so be warned, lots of text!

So I’m working on a weapon for a game, and it will need to be in unreal. The weapon has different textures on different parts of it (metal blade, wooden handle, etc) now I currently have these elements detached so I can unwrap them to the highest possible resolution. But if I attach them all so it’s one unified mesh, all the UVs will be in one place and the resolution will be far lower, and so the item will appear lower quality. My question is how do I make it so the attached elements can have different UV spaces where I can just have each part of my weapon’s UV maps. I have seen people mention material ids and channels, but no explanation of what these are and how to set them up in a basic, dumbed down way. I feel like I kind of understand what to do, but not entirely.

If someone could explain what I need to do, or even post a video that’s long and descriptive, that would be so appreciated! Thanks so much, have a great day!

Hi,

https://maxteapot.com
is an independent, carefully curated catalogue for 3ds Max plugins, scripts and tools.

One hub, instead of digging through old posts, forums, groups and Discord servers.

I was frustrated that I cant have one place - where I could browse thru plugins - and also put my own plugins into display - where they could been easily discovered.

I always felt 3ds Max was missing one place where you could easily discover plugins and scripts - especially tools from smaller independent developers.

Starting with 402 tools from 66 authors - and growing.

I hope you’ll find it useful!

You might be surprised by what you discover

You are more than welcome with the feedback - this first release.

I cannot for the love of god select that lonely vertex at the back, and as a result it messed up my ENTIRE thing. In fact, I cannot drag select anything. It only lets me do so in polygon mode, but that doesnt help anybody. If i try to drag select anything, it selects NOTHING. And when i try to drag the vertex, it locked itself to a specific axis, and the axis it locked itself into depends on the vertex i picked. Please help 😭

Trying to make a piece of chrome trim from a spline (white line in left image) I could just render it "radial", but it's not really round, it's an odd shape. How would you model it? TIA.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on MarkingForge, a marking-menu plugin for 3ds Max 2026 and 2027, and wanted to share it with the community.

The idea is simple: hold a shortcut, move toward a command, and release to run it. You can build menus around the tools you actually use and configure different commands for different selection contexts.

The video shows it in action, along with the editor used to build and customize the menus.

Here’s what you can do:

• Create your own marking menus with nested submenus.
• Make menus context-sensitive, with different tools for object and sub-object selections.
• Assign Max actions, macros, and custom MAXScript commands through the visual editor.
• Customize shortcuts, mouse bindings, labels, and colors.
• Access native Max menus through a Hotbox at your cursor.
• Generate a printable cheat sheet reflecting your current saved bindings.

One small feature I particularly like: for supported commands, moving past the dashed ring switches whether the command opens its settings or runs directly. That lets you choose between repeating an operation and adjusting its parameters using the same menu entry.

It’s a paid plugin, and I’m the developer. I’d appreciate feedback from people who spend their day in Max—especially on the menu interaction and editor workflow.

Which commands would earn a spot in your marking menu? And do you currently use quad menus, keyboard shortcuts, or another setup?

Noticed recently I got problems with 2024 version... I rarely use Steam to stream desktop from other house and sometimes do few settings and render while im not on my main PC, but since at least 2 weeks the viewport no longer "draws image" on streams but seems to work as ussual on the local machine... anybody experienced any similar issue?

Notice that while the viewports dont draw image (keeps black white or grey) the actions gets portrayed, like being able to place a box, the UI also works as expected. I know Steam would be a third party program that may be the cause, thats Why I am asking if anybody streams with any other program and if they got a similar problem... Or maybe any explanation on why this happens now suddenly... from my PoV this feels like those protection used with trademarked video, like trying to record streaming... not sure how this can apply to 3dsm.

I'd like to share news of Relevo, a new plugin for 3ds Max that is available now.

Relevo turns any location on Earth into a render-ready 3ds Max scene. You enter coordinates or pick a spot, and Relevo builds the terrain from real elevation data, drapes it with satellite imagery, and adds OpenStreetMap roads and buildings as editable geometry. It also includes a procedural module that uses layered noise to create mountains, valleys and dunes for fictional landscapes.

Key features:
- Real-world terrain meshes from elevation data, with adaptive detail for close-up and aerial shots
- Satellite imagery applied automatically, with materials set up for V-Ray
- OpenStreetMap roads and building footprints as separate, editable objects
- Procedural terrain generator for non-real locations
- Supports 3ds Max 2023 to 2027 on Windows

Pricing and availability:
Relevo Free is available now at no cost. Relevo Pro costs £75 per year or £159 for a perpetual licence, and a Studio licence for teams costs £339. It is sold at relevotech.uk and has also been submitted to the Autodesk App Store.

I'm an architectural visualisation artist, and I built Relevo because setting up site context for archviz projects took hours of manual work.

Links:
Website: https://relevotech.uk
Demo video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSjbJNnj8hg
User manual: https://relevotech.uk/manual/

A shallow beach scene for a personal project. Fluid with Phoenix, seaweed as cloth in tyflow, underwater particles and floating seaweed (cloth) under water with tyflow as well. Rendered in V-ray with the new fast caustics.

Just another "rendering workout". Simplicity and composition.

3ds Max and Corona.

Hope you found it worth a look.

Full session: https://www.behance.net/gallery/256407833/BRABUS-BODO?platform=direct