Activate and set up the render elements you’ll need for compositing. Next, activate the “VRay FRAME BUFFER”. Inside the VFB rollout, check the “SAVE SEPARATE RENDER CHANNELS” check box and click “BROWSE” to save your frames. When you click render, Max will prompt you with an alert about “saving a sequence with no output”, click “OK” to ignore. Now VRay will save out all your render elements in the specified folder. Each frame will have the element name suffixed to the original file name. 

Quickly create Bitmap maps in the Slate or Compact material editor by dragging your file from any explorer window to the editor.  If you drag it to a slot in the Compact editor, it will create a standard material with that map in the diffuse slot.  If you drag it into the Slate editor it just creates a bitmap.

If you’ve ever been working inside an Edit-Poly modifier and needed to move vertices along a non-ortho edge, you’ve realized it can be difficult. If you scroll down in the Command Panel and find the “Edit Geometry” rollout, inside you’ll see a set of parameters named “Constrain” with the options “None”, “Edge”, “Face” and “Normal”. Click “Edge” and now your vertex selection will ONLY move along the shared edges of the vertex selection! Also works with Face and Normal mode as well as with other Sub-object levels selected (edge, border, polygon, element).

When saving out an LDR format, remember that your 2.2 gamma is only “previewed” in the VFB window.  You can choose to bake the gamma in by overriding it in the “Save Image” dialogue.  Alternatively you can go to “Rendering -> Gamma/LUT Setup…” and type in 2.2 into the “Output Gamma” field. Now every image you save will be baked with 2.2.

If you want more precision while drawing lines, go into PREFERENCES / VIEWPORTS and toggle the Zoom About Mouse Point options on.  Now your middle mouse wheel will use your mouse as its zoom target. 

If you think in an inverted Y-axis, for flying, video games, etc. 

Edit > Preferences > Input Devices > Check “Reverse Orbit”

When working in a cluttered scene, it can be difficult to select your camera target.   To easily select it, R-Click on the camera’s body and select “Select Camera Target”. This can also be reversly done by selecting the camera target.

To reverse a PathDeform animation, simply edit the spline’s last vertex to be its first by selecting it and clicking “Make First”.  This will make the first vertex the starting point for the animation.

Press the ‘Q’ key to enable/disable HyperNURBS (sub-d smoothing). Much faster than clicking the green ‘check mark’ on and off. Also, it doesn’t contribute to the undo/history chain.

Finally happy with your camera angle? Set a keyframe on frame 0 of the camera so you dont accidentally lose it.  Life Saver!

To quickly add a list controller to multiple objects, simply freeze your transforms.  When you “Freeze” an object’s transform, it creates a two-controller list of which the second controller is the default for its transform.

Hit “7” on the keyboard to display viewport stats including poly, and vert counts as well as a live FPS read out.

Once you apply a material to an object in Max, you won’t be able to un-assign it.  You can only apply other materials.  To remove the assignment from all objects and revert back to the object color, type “Geometry.material = undefined” in your MaxScript Listener!  To revert only selected objects, make selection and type “$.material = undefined”.

If you are working on a certain object(s) and find yourself accidentally deselecting the object(s) or selecting other objects in the viewport, you can use the Lock Selection button to prevent that from happening. Hit the Spacebar to lock/unlock the currently selected object and you will not be able to deselect that object or select any other objects until you unlock the selection. This is good to be aware of anyway, as many beginners hit the spacebar accidentally and then don’t know why they are stuck in a selected object.

If you are trying to make selections based on a certain type of object (i.e. bones, shapes, lights, etc) you can set the selection filter to that type and the viewport will disable selection on all other types of objects, making for easier selection. Comes in handy when setting up/testing rigs, when you don’t want to have to freeze your model geometry, but you can avoid accidentally selecting geometry by setting the filter to not include geometry. You can also choose Combos and select multiple choices, such as bones & shapes (rig controls).