3Ds Max overview

  Quick Access toolbar: Provides file handling and undo/redo commands, plus a drop-down list for switching among different workspace interfaces.

Main toolbar: Provides many of the most commonly used commands in 3ds Max.

The Ribbon: Contains an array of tools for modeling, painting into the scene, and adding people.

Scene Explorer: For viewing, sorting, filtering, and selecting objects in 3ds Max, as well as renaming, deleting, hiding, and freezing objects, creating and modifying object hierarchies.

Viewport Layouts: This is a special tab bar for switching quickly between different viewport configurations. You can use the default layouts provided, or create your own custom layouts.

Status Bar controls: Displays prompts and status information about your scene and the active command. The coordinate display fields to the right of the prompt let you enter transform values manually.

Viewport label menus: The viewport labels are menus that let you change what each viewport displays, including the point of view (POV) and shading style.

Quad menu: When you click the right mouse button anywhere in an active viewport, except on the viewport label, a quad menu is displayed. The options available in the quad menu depend on the selection.

Time Slider: Lets you navigate along the timeline and jump to any animation frame in your scene. You can quickly set position and rotation or scale keys by right-clicking the time slider and choosing the desired key from the Create Key dialog.

Viewports: Display your scene from multiple angles and can preview lighting, shadows, depth of field, and other effects. Command Panel: Gives you access to tools for creating and modifying geometry, adding lights, controlling animation, and so on. The Modify panel, in particular, has a wealth of tools for adding complexity to geometry.

Animation controls: Let you create animation and play back animation within viewports.

Tips time:

Working on a Lower-Resolution System

If you’re working with a screen resolution less than 1280 × 1024, you will not be able to see all the tools on the Main Toolbar. Some of the tools are off the screen to the far right. To access these tools,place the cursor on the toolbar so that a hand icon appears, and then click and drag the toolbar to the left. If you have trouble with this, move your cursor under one of the drop-down lists on the Main Toolbar to access the pan (“hand”) tool. The hidden tools will emerge. You can also click the Rendering menu item to access all the rendering tools. The smallest supported screen resolution for the UI in 3ds Max 2013 is 1024 × 768, but the recommended resolution is 1280 × 1024 or higher. All the screenshots presented in this book use a 1680 × 1050 resolution.