Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
How Does Customizing Help Me?
You should absolutely, positively, 100% modify your key
assignments, quad menus, and button selections of the com-
mand panel. By doing so, you're familiarizing yourself with the
user interface even more. You're a hundred times more likely
to remember and use a feature that is extremely helpful if
you've assigned it to a key yourself.
By using all the tools at your disposal you'll be saving tons
of time every single day. This will not only keep you from
doing really boring things over and over, but will also improve
your production time. It feels great to be able to create some-
thing in record time and be able to go back to add
more
detail
because you're ahead of schedule! This will yield better-look-
ing art from you and make you a happy little artist!
What about MaxScript?
Besides just using the tools you are given in Max, you can
actually create more tools with MaxScript. If you have a little
bit of a background in scripting and/or writing code, MaxScript
is a blast. In Max 2008 Autodesk has painstakingly and com-
pletely overhauled the user interface for creating Max scripts.
It's quite an amazing improvement and one of the most excit-
ing changes in Max 2008.
Because MaxScript is a fairly massive scripting language
in its own right, I don't have space in this topic to go into
details. Max ships with some wonderful references and tutori-
als on how to get started; just open the help files.
If you aren't into creating tools and just want to see what
others have created, there are some great web sites. My
favorite is http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max-scripts. You'll
have hundreds of user-created tools, most free of charge, that
will literally shave hours off of creation time!
