thanks for the scripts, cant believe there is no .ini that can be edited :/

btw the icon #s for the box and the plane are switched.

as soon as I am done with my current project I will install all of this
thx for the awesome fixes

This looks awesome, wish I had 09 so I could try this out, but alasl I am stuck with 9. Any possibility that it could work with 9? Prolly not but thought I would ask.
Agree with Render, Autodesk should hire you to help them clean up their mess that they obviously don't know what to do with.

Well the problem with autodesk using this as default is that 3dsmax gets used for much more then just modeling. One mans useless interface is another mans workflow.

Well maybe a toggle or drop down that easily allows the switching of the UI? So then an artist can switch from different UI setups depending on their needs at the time. I believe Maya kind of does this, where you can switch beteen Modeling, Animating, rigging, rendering ect...

They kind of leave it generic so you can decide.

I have two UI's one for modeling and one for animation and they swap with a keystroke. The modeling looks very similar to Pers. I moved and cloned a lot of buttons into custom toolbars that are hidden or shown depending on the UI it also hides the lower animation bar when in modeling mode. It also loads custom buttons in the command panel depending on what UI is up.

The only thing I haven't figured out how to do is expand the command panel one or two columns via script, so I handle that manually when I need it (particles, hair/fur, biped).

I haven't quite worked it out for 2010 yet (graphite tool bar is kind of hard to script around) but 2009 its pretty slick.

Originally Posted by Vig

Well the problem with autodesk using this as default is that 3dsmax gets used for much more then just modeling. One mans useless interface is another mans workflow.

If you look through the 3DSclean feature list you won't find a bias towards modeling or any other discipline. It's supposed to fix defaults that are obsolete, broken or just poor. If there's anything in specific you think that should be changed to make the changes more generic I'd be happy if you let me know.

I don't want anyone thinking that installing 3DSclean will force workflows on them or anything of the sort; it's written to make things easier for people, not harder.

AnimeAngel: Please try it with max9. It should work fine.

If you want to test, here's what I suggest you do:

• Make a backup copy of your existing max dir, to preserve any settings, etc that you want, or to be able to revert completely.
• uninstall max
• install max, followed by relevant service packs/hotfixes
• make a backup copy of the install dir
• copy in 3DSclean and test. If it breaks, revert to your backup and let me know what went wrong and I'll see what can be done about it.

Originally Posted by perna

If you look through the 3DSclean feature list you won't find a bias towards modeling or any other discipline. It's supposed to fix defaults that are obsolete, broken or just poor. If there's anything in specific you think that should be changed to make the changes more generic I'd be happy if you let me know.

I don't want anyone thinking that installing 3DSclean will force workflows on them or anything of the sort; it's written to make things easier for people, not harder.

3dsclean is a great starting place for anyone to build off of.

But there are a few little things like the viewport settings cranked to max lend themselves to modeling/texture preview. Which could impact performance more then most animators probably care about. By the time I get the model I trust the guy before me did his job and I'm more concerned with motion and deformation.

But easy enough to change to something lower so its a good base. But still geared toward modeling/texture preview.

The 3PStoolbar is also a great starting place but is geared toward modeling as some of the helpful animation tools are hidden. Curve Editor, Schematic View, Fence Selection Region, Bind to Spacewarp. But those are easy enough to drag back out or access through another method. So it defiantly doesn't force anyone on a rail or workflow.

What I was trying to point out is that someone, somewhere probably uses buttons we think are useless. Autodesk has a wide market they have to service and while its nice to see some of what we call bloat removed its probably never going to happen app wide.

"They kind of leave it generic so you can decide." is still a poor excuse for the state of things, though. Certainly there will be things that I Per and I don't use that you do, and I'd be surprised if my workflow had much in common with that of an arch viz professional, but that still doesn't account for many, many annoyances.

I will try perna. and will let you know how it goes.

Originally Posted by MightyPea

"They kind of leave it generic so you can decide." is still a poor excuse for the state of things, though. Certainly there will be things that I Per and I don't use that you do, and I'd be surprised if my workflow had much in common with that of an arch viz professional, but that still doesn't account for many, many annoyances.

Very true. I'm not making an excuses for them not improving things. I'll be one of the first in line at the complaint window with a laundry list of things that need changing and fixing.

Just trying to explain and hopefully avoid needless frustration when things don't ever change. I would like to see this as an option (and a few other options) available on install. So long as it comes with documentation that explains what is changed and how to undo/redo it.

I think its easier to strip out the UI and rebuild it yourself possibly using 3PSToolbar as a good starting point then it would for them to hide things and force people to go digging to find them again. I also think they don't go far enough in allowing users to customize the UI in a quick friendly way.

Hmmm.. well tried it and I get nothing at all.

I copied the files to the root directory, ran the bat file and then the program, but got no changes that I can see.

can you show a screenshot of what max looks like upon starting?

Well my normal UI still appears

I'm pretty sure you need to uninstall, delete all traces of 3dsmax, install, not run 3dsmax, run 3DSClean and then it should work?

As Vig says, the install instructions need to be followed to the letter. On an existing install with user directories, the mods won't make any difference at all.

If it doesn't work on a clean install I'll need any error messages you receive and your 3dsmax.ini file (the way it looks after you run max to check the mod changes)

ah ok.. ill try again

Ok well I uninstalled and reinstalled, drop 3ds clean and files into root directory and ran the bat. I then started max.
The only change I see is the Missing:348 button at the top. Did I miss something or maybe just botched the install?

Well, it seems maybe you haven't read the info It seems it works fairly well. I can tell lots of things have changed, from that screenshot only. You should be getting the stdmax file template open in max9 though, hmm

Ah yes, after closer inspection and playing around a bit I see some of the changes. I will check it out further as I progress through my current project. Thx!

this is great.
i love max, but i love tidier max more.

i often make my own maxscripts to streamline my work but this sort of top level spring cleaning has always eluded me. i do rip out the quad menus usually but thats as far as it goes. this is a great clean basis for any game artist to build their ideal ui around.

thanks for all your efforts!

Menu file updated, notes here

Wallasaurus: Unfortunately the quad menus are stored in the same file as the pulldown menus. The only quad stuff I use is CTRL+SHIFT to add modifiers and plain right click to access object properties or convert to epoly.

Per, will this only work on a fresh max install (as you said in the instructions) ?
I wanted to give it a shot but didn't want to kill my install.

You could try installing it again to another folder, I'm not sure what that would do to the current install? Or if it would fubar the original on uninstall... It would probably just complain that its already installed?

I installed it on my wifes laptop with the 30 day trial just to see how smooth it went. I liked it, a lot. Great starting place.

Maybe back up your 3dsmax folder, uninstall, reinstall apply 3dsClean and if it doesn't work out, reinstall and copy the back up over?