Working with scenes in 3ds Max

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Let's talk a little bit more about how you can organize

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your projects and your scene files within three Ds max.

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So here we have sort of a drone model

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and we want to save this with all of its materials and textures.

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And when we say projects like this,

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we want to keep everything organized so that we know where everything is.

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For instance, we want to know where the geometry is.

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We want to know where the textures are that are being pulled into the scene,

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et cetera.

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And so the way that we can do this in three Ds Macs is to use three Ds max projects.

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And so where you're gonna go to find the project functionality is under the file menu

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under project.

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And then also over here next to the, where the project is listed,

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you'll see a number of buttons here on the right side of that.

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And so what we can do, we come down to project

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and we'll just

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come in here,

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we can create an empty project but no structure

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and we can kind of build it from scratch.

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We can create a default project which has the default folder structure in it.

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We can also create a new project from our current one.

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And this will also allow us to set a project.

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So if we have several projects that we're working on simultaneously,

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we can set a project to a particular one, work on that

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and then set it back to the original.

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So let's go ahead and create a new project

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and let's create a default project.

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So I'll go ahead and click on create default

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that will bring up our explorer window.

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So what I'm gonna do is navigate to where I want to put that new project.

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So I'm going to put it in a folder called projects.

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I'm gonna go ahead and create a new folder

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and I'm just gonna call this getting started 2021.

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Go ahead and click into there and we'll select the folder.

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So now if we look in the upper right,

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you can see that the project we just created is the current project.

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If we jump into a file explorer and go into that folder, we just created,

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you can see that three Ds Max has created a

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number of different folders inside of that getting started 2021.

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You can see there's a scenes folder,

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uh there's a folder for import and export for

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downloads for our backup files and so forth.

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Now the layout for how those folders are created can be found.

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If we go under project and let's configure project paths,

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you can see all of these listed on the right

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correspond to those folders that we saw in our project.

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Now, if for whatever reason, we wanted to change any of these,

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we can click on any of these folders

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and go to modify them and we can change what those folders are.

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So now if we want to save this file, we can go to file,

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save as and save it into the scenes directory of that particular project.

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And when we're saving scenes,

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we can save them as a max formatted file or we can also export elements of our scenes,

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go to export.

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You can see that that defaults into our export folder.

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And if you click up the drop down,

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you'll see a number of different kinds of files that you can export F B

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X and O B J are probably the ones that you're most familiar with.

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But there are also files related more to manufacturing. We've got o limbic caches

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that we can deal with as well.

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So a lot of different options in terms of files and

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we'll talk more about that in the pipeline integration lesson.

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We can also, if we're trying to bring things indoor scene,

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we can go to import,

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we can import geometry or if we have another max file that we want to combine,

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we can merge it into the current scene.

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And one thing that I did want to mention

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is any time you're using any kind of 3D software. And three Ds Max is no exception.

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You want to be smart about how you save your files.

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So for instance, this file is called Drone dot X.

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If I continue working on this file and I continue to just save over Drone dot Max,

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what happens if Drone dot Max gets corrupted while I've lost all

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of the work that I've done could be days or weeks.

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So there are a few tools that we can use

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to minimize our risk of losing work that we've done.

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The first tool that we could use is to simply increment our saves.

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So instead of Drone dot Max, I would start with Drone 01,

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I would do some work. And then the next time I save it, I would save it as drone at 02.

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If we go into file preferences,

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you can see under the files tab, there is an increment on save.

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If I go ahead and check that box

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and click, ok.

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And then I go up to file and I hit save. You can see that it's automatically added a 01

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to this max file.

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So now if I spend, let's say 30 minutes doing some more work and I save it again

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and something happens to my file,

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I've only lost 30 minutes of work rather than my entire project.

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So incrementing is a smart thing to do.

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If you have the space for it, you don't have to keep 10 files.

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You could keep maybe five increments or you could keep all of them.

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If you really want to be able to go back and forth, it's up to you,

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but it is smart not to keep saving over the same scene file.

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We can also turn on auto backup.

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So if we go back into preferences,

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you can see auto backup right below the file handling

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here. You can see how many files you want to keep.

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So here, we're only keeping three and we're backing up every five minutes.

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You can see there's also

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some text that you can add to the file name

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here. You can see the check box for backup on save.

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So whenever you save a file, you'll save A dot B A K file as a backup.

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So there are several tools in three Ds max to help make sure that you

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don't lose any of the work that you've done if something were to happen.

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So that's a look at working with projects in three Ds max and saving scene files and

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ways we can minimize our risk in terms of losing any of the work that we've done.