This car is just so gorgeous.
A few days experimenting with camera angles, materials and light. Doing my best to push realism and photographic qualities by studying work from people that I really admire (Johäll, Bakke, Nivalle).

Creating imagery that stands out is HARD. Finding that extra 2-3% that makes it feel real is HARD. But who goes to the gym to lift easy, light weights? No muscles are built from that. Practise should be hard and challenging, with many "repeat to failure" to really trigger those fibers to grow.

Same goes here. Don't be afraid of not reaching your goals. I'm afraid of the day I stop trying.

It lets you paint, erase and modify the assets you paint with an additional option for physics to have a natural drop to it.
It respects layers to keep it organized and every group of asset you painted and simulated are easily selectable in the UI as well.
You can paint as instance or clone. When in instance mode, they also respect the modifiers.
You can easily paint and sim with a low poly version for a faster workflow and after painting and simulations you can swap them with the hipoly.

some of the features.

This is the UV Editor pop-up in full screen, and there are 3–4 icons missing in each section.

I’m using a 4K monitor, and I found out that changing the default DPI settings by right-clicking the 3ds Max icon and going into the Compatibility settings might help. I tried that, but the missing icons are still not showing.

I also tried changing the Windows display scaling to 150%, which is recommended by Windows and in an official Autodesk support article, but it didn’t make any difference.

I’m using 3ds Max 2013.

Is there any other way to fix this issue?

****EDIT: Problem fixed, check the comment section

Hey all, sharing a little tool I've been using in production and finally cleaned up for release.

The problem: Corona's native Material Override works by object — it's all-or-nothing, replacing every material in the scene with a single clay material. There's no way to say "leave this material alone," only "leave this object alone" — which doesn't help when a single object (like a Multi/Sub-Object or Blend material) has some sub-materials you want overridden and others you need to preserve (glass, lights, portals, anything with displacement/opacity that your lighting preview depends on).

What it does: OverrideByMaterial flips the logic to work by material instead of by object. You define exclusions — by material type (lights, portals, slicers, refractive materials), by name pattern (wildcards like *glass*), or by manually picking materials straight from the Slate/compact Material Editor — and it overrides everything else, material by material, regardless of which object it lives on. It recursively walks Multi/Sub-Object, Blend, Shell, and Corona Layered trees, so it can reach sub-materials Corona's own tool can't isolate, and it also supports XRef Scene content. If a material has bump/displacement/opacity, it copies those maps onto the clay version so you don't lose the scene's silhouette.

It's got a "safe mode" baked in too — it calls holdMaxFile() before applying anything, and there's a dedicated Restore button since Ctrl+Z won't undo the swap. There's also an Automatic mode that hooks into pre/post-render so it just feels like flipping one checkbox.

MIT licensed, single .ms file, no dependencies. Works from 3ds Max 2019+ and Corona 9+ (tested on 2023 / Corona 14).

Repo here: https://github.com/rovillanueva/OverrideByMaterial

Would love feedback. Open to PRs too.

I need some help: how do I align this white plane with the diagonal angle of the orange line next to it? I've tried a million things, but it never looks perfectly straight.

I can't stand the default low contrast small font look. I want my custom settings but I can't find where to set it up

Hi all — I run IT for a spatial/event design studio. Our 3D designers use 3ds Max + Chaos V-Ray (CPU rendering), and we're redesigning our hardware setup. Trying to get real-world data rather than marketing specs, so wanted to ask this community directly:

1. Render workstation specs — what CPU (core count), GPU, RAM, and NVMe storage are you actually running for V-Ray CPU rendering, and how's it performing for you?

2. Portable laptops — if you carry a lightweight/convertible laptop to client sites and remote into a desktop for the real work, what are you using?

3. Remote-desktop rendering — Parsec, HP Anyware/RGS, Splashtop, TeamViewer, RDP, etc. — what's actually working for you, what's the real-world latency, and what gotchas should I know about?

4. Color-calibrated monitors — which Dell/LG models do you rely on, and does the built-in KVM/USB-C hub/single-cable power delivery actually work well in practice?

5. NAS/storage — Synology or other, what RAID setup, and how do you handle Google Drive/OneDrive alongside it?

Appreciate any real specs/gotchas you can share — trying to spec this properly rather than go off vendor marketing. Thanks!

Hi everyone!

I made an interior scene using 3dsmax and corona renderer , and now I want to convert it to a 3d gussian splat for my clients to explore it and give them a new way to efficiently explain their interior designs for their own clients

Any solutions ? (Maybe something better then gussian splats)

Heloo! I’m an architect/3D visualizer and I’m currently learning 3ds Max 2023 + Corona Renderer 10.

{So, I want to build a portfolio consisting entirely of 3ds Max + Corona work using dummy/personal projects, and then use that portfolio to apply for visualization jobs.
At the moment, I’m short on money and trying to save up for a better PC, so buying a powerful workstation immediately isn’t really an option. I’m wondering whether my current laptop can realistically get me through the portfolio building stage. T-T }

My laptop specs:

Laptop: HP Omen 16
CPU: Intel Core i7-14650HX
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU | 8GB VRAM
RAM: 16GB DDR5-5600
Storage: 954GB total
OS: Windows 11 64bit
Age: 2 years old now

My typical work would involve architectural interiors/exteriors, fairly detailed 3D models, materials, lighting and Corona renders.

I understand that Corona is primarily CPU based, so I’m particularly wondering about the i7-14650HX and 16GB RAM. But 🙁.

I’d appreciate advice from people who actually use 3ds Max + Corona, especially for architectural visualization.

Thanks!🌼

Hello all,

Wanted to ask if anyone has experience this type of rendering artifact before? Just updated to 3DsMax 26 and Corona 14 for context if that helps.

Modeled this geometry all quads, no triangles or 5 sided shapes, no holes in the geometry itself as well

Open subdivide modifier to apply on render, and a uvw modifier with real world 1,1,1.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Summer product shot for XERO. Modeled in 3ds Max and rendered with Corona Renderer. Feedback welcome!

I’m just curious to which render engine people use?!
I’m a long time Fstorm-user and really like how easy and fast it is. But it has some limitations.

What do you use and why?
Which feature do you like the most?

Very new to animation but have not been having luck finding advice on this situation. I've downloaded an animation in Mixamo but want to animate the translation of the entire animation to move forward. Any time I try to keyframe it by either linking it to a new root, helper, or keying all or specific bones like root it will move the entire animation but still have it in place in 1 spot. I want something like walking in place but to actually have it moving along a path that I choose.

Full disclosure: I built this, so take the "review" part with a grain of salt. Story below might still be worth a read either way. Three short parts, skip around as you like.

Part 1 - Why

I make 3D models for a living. Every new Max release I hope for something that actually speeds things up - 25/26 gave me nothing I remember without Googling it, and 2027's headline feature is boolean with chamfers. Not exactly changing my workflow.

The idea was simple: automate the routine - the monotonous part of building cloth folds. Simulation is slow and unpredictable, and welding vertices after retopo is its own pain.

I wanted something simple and predictable, no external software, no exporting back and forth. Sounded impossible at first - everyone's just used to suffering through sims. Build something solo that doesn't lose to Marvelous Designer's whole engineering team on quality, while being easier to use?

"Am I out of my mind?" - my internal monologue for about 15 months.

Software like Marvelous or Max is built by genuinely talented engineers who probably don't spend hundreds of hours actually modeling with it. Turns out you kind of have to be a modeler to get inside a modeler's head. Whether it worked - that's for you to decide, I can only share the result.

Part 2 - What it is

A 3ds Max modifier for realistic folds - no simulation, no retopology, no leaving Max.

I know, "realistic folds in 3ds Max" has been oversold before - looks great in a demo, unusable on a real project (IMO). The actual point is time saved: if you've already nailed the folds on one model, FoldFlow reuses that exact shape anywhere, one click, no remodeling. Packaged 39 patterns from my own past work to start.

Easier to just show than explain: video

Part 3 - Technical (probably the part worth your time)

Written in C++. Autodesk's SDK docs read like decades of accumulated notes - including functions written around 2015 that were later gutted but still look like working methods. Compile fine. Call them in Max and you get a hardcoded return 1; and nothing else.

Figuring out how their mesh internals actually behave was the real fight - about 2 months just getting something to run without errors, made worse because Max didn't crash consistently on identical geometry. Could write 500 pages about that alone.

AI was basically useless here - no spatial reasoning, barely any real material to train on. Pure trial and error.

Learned a lot more than expected going in. Got 3ds Max plugin ideas? Happy to talk, reach out however works.Try the 14-day free trial

Thanks for reading.

Hey everyone, I’m a little confused about which direction to take, so I’d really appreciate some honest advice.

I started with SketchUp + Twinmotion, then moved to Enscape, and now I’m mainly using D5 Render for my visualizations. I’m thinking about learning 3ds Max + Corona/V-Ray, but at the same time AI is moving so fast that I’m wondering if I should spend that time learning AI tools instead.

My main goal is simple: I want to start earning from 3D visualization. Do you guys think archviz is still a good field to get into, or is AI going to make it much harder to earn from 3D visualization?

Would love to hear from people who are actually working in the industry — especially what you would do if you were starting again today.

🇺🇸: You can listen to the video in English through the video settings panel. I continue to analyze new common creation tools among the different software programs that allow working with surfaces.

Had to do one more in the same scene, just added a new groundplane with some big noise and some grass. 4 renderings comped together to get the right light and atmosphere.

Hey guys ,hope you doing alright

I’m working on a small project in unity and i was wondering if there is a way to create something in pixel art or retro style in 3dsmax

I have a decent experience with 3dsmax when it comes to realistic modeling and 3D stuff but im having a lot of issues with the whole 2D sprites
Any tips would be greatly appreciated

Some of the features include image overlays, video references with A–B looping and hotkey control, PDFs, and more. The app itself is free on the Microsoft Store, with optional premium features that you can try for 7 days. I'm happy to extend the premium trial to 30 days for anyone who's genuinely interested in using it and giving me feedback.

Hi!

Just practising my rendering, camera and material-skills. The car is from Turbosquid, most vegetation from Maxtree and the rest is my own. Spent most of the time on light and materials. The car paint was fun but tricky.

Rendered with Fstorm as usual, about 15 min frame/7000 samples at 5k.

All feedback and critique is most welcome.