3ds Max

Autodesk 3ds Max is a commercial application for 3D modelling, one of the best choices (along with Autodesk Maya) for Computer Games and for Architectural Previsualisation.

3ds Max and Maya are available to students and educators for free with an education email address. Blender 3D is a powerful open source alternative that is free for everyone.

Online help for 3ds Max 2019

Customize>Units Setup to Metric Meters or you will be working in feet & inches…

Remember to set project folder in 3ds Max, this is where you will also export your textures from Photoshop to the scene assets/images folder.

Use scanline renderer if it is going to a games engine such as Unity so there is no need for a more processor-intensive renderer.

Show shaded material in viewport. Box > Editable Poly

We have some additional tutorial pages on this site including:

Boolean to cut a window or merge two objects

Transparency and Alpha Channels

Render from 3ds Max

Adding Sound to 3ds Max

Change Viewport Background


A series of short guides to textures from the official Autodesk 3ds Max learning channel on YouTube:
lesson 15 materials (inc. playlist)
lesson 16 maps
lesson 17 bump maps
lesson 18 unwrapping and maps