Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Customizing Your User Interface
Now we'll focus on customizing your user interface. Max is
very user friendly, in that you can move portions of the UI
around and even dock it to other parts of the UI. You can cre-
ate your own custom toolbars and modify existing ones. We'll
start off with the absolute basics. Let's start adjusting the
current UI and moving things around a bit. The big command
panel to the right of your screen is where you will access
almost every tool in 3ds Max.
This is what houses all your modifiers and their settings
(among other things). The problem, however, is that some-
times a modifier or object has so many settings that you run
out of room in this panel. When that happens, the excess
settings are displayed below the other settings on the screen.
Similar to navigating a long web site, you have to keep scroll-
ing down to see more information. This is not a problem,
although it can become cumbersome to scroll down to the
bottom of your settings over and over again. To accommodate
the display of extended settings, you can pull this panel out
horizontally. The settings will automatically adjust to the new
room made available.
To extend the panel, just move your cursor to the left
edge of that panel. Your cursor shape will change when you
get to an adjustable area. Grab the edge and pull to the left.
You can actually pull the panel out so far that you almost
completely lose your interface.
You can also tear off parts of your interface and dock them
to other parts of your UI or keep them as floaters. If you have
dual monitors like I do, it's nice to tear off your command
panel and put it on your second monitor. This way you can use
one monitor as your 3D viewport and the other monitor to
house all your tools. There are two ways to tear off parts of
your UI. You can grab the corner of your panel and right-click.
When you do that, you will see a context menu with a few
options (Dock and Float). You can also manually pull a panel
off and move it about the UI.
