Small Annoying Things

PURPOSE
This forum is about all the little annoying quirks and problems in 3ds Max that you might have gotten used to over the years but that might benefit from a second look.

Remember, keep these ideas to tweaks of the workflow rather than large, sweeping changes to the tools. Try to imagine how much effort a programmer has to go into in order to implement your suggestion. Anything requiring major UI changes or new UI dialogs will need to go in another forum.

Feature ideas considered too big will simply be moved to the General Feature Requests forum; suggestions for new defaults should go into the Default Settings forum.

Add your vote to any idea if you also think this is an annoying behavior that needs to be fixed.

HOW TO USE THE FORUM
- Each user has 20 votes for each forum
- Each idea can have no more than 3 votes by a single user
- If you enter an idea, it will cost you 1 vote – therefore try to make sure the idea doesn’t already exist
- The more precise and detailed a description you give, the more likely your idea will rise higher in the list
- When an idea is implemented, votes are returned to all the users that voted
- User can change their votes at any time
- Admins can move, edit and delete ideas as they see fit to better meet the goals of the forum
- We will flag ideas that are getting our attention as “under review”. Because of limits on what we can say publicly, that is as far as we can go with commenting on a particular idea. If it is “under review” it simply means we’re studying it for possible implementation or gathering data, but there is no commitment to do it.

Remember, we do not release versions on “internet time”. Unlike the web sites this was designed for, our process of releasing functionality is much longer term. So there won’t be a constant churn of ideas being “closed out” by us and votes returned to you. For this tool to map to our process, we will be looking at the data during a short period of the year (3-6 months) and deciding what actions to take after that. Don’t expect to post an idea and a month later for us to respond in some fashion to it. The most likely scenario is that you’ll post an idea and if a lot of other people vote on it, we’ll eventually flag it as “under review” – but that could be 9 months later or longer.

Please treat this as an experiment in working with the community. Even if Uservoice is not the final home for this, we’ll do our best to export all the ideas to whatever future system might take its place. Your voice will persist.

Note: It’s important to realize that these lists are simply raising the quality of the feedback we get from the community. They are not a replacement for how we define the features for any given release. They are valuable input, but beta input, product strategy, focus, innovation and other factors are also important aspects we consider.

BUGS
Please report them here:
http://www.autodesk.com/3dsmax-DefectSubmission

AVAILABLE PUBLIC FORUMS
Default Settings
Please tell us which user defaults settings you change the most! Enter a description of the default or ini setting and then see how the community votes on it. Remember these are only the user preferences you can either set in the interface or ini files.

General Feature Requests
Please help us collect ideas for new features and general product enhancements. What’s on your top ten list? Add a vote to any idea you also think is important!

Small Annoying Things
This forum is about all the little annoying quirks and problems in 3ds Max that you might have gotten used to over the years but that really should be fixed.
Remember, keep these ideas to tweaks of the workflow rather than large, sweeping changes to the tools. Try to imagine how much effort a programmer has to go into in order to implement your suggestion. Anything requiring major UI changes or new UI dialogs will need to go in another forum.

SDK/Scripting Enhancements
This forum is about improvements to the SDK or Script-related.

Describe a small problem in 3ds Max that annoys you in your daily work. Please give the steps that show it and describe clearly how you'd prefer it to work. Please include a description!

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  • Hot ideas
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  1. Prevent Object Creation on a Hidden Layer

    If you turn off a layer then at present there is no warning that this operation is invalid - you just don't see anything until you unhide the layer. 3ds max needs to trap this error and throw up a dialog warning you that the layer is hidden.

    219 votes
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    under review  ·  5 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  2. Manual layer order in Layer Manager

    I use the Layer Manager quite often. It is annoying that you cannot "manually" drag and organize object listings! If I want folders to be listed in certain orders I have to give them bizarre character symbols, (like: &$?@), so they will show up in the order i need them in with max's alphiabetized ordering scheme.

    74 votes
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    5 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

    Sorry for the previous message, my mistake. This request is about changing the order of layers, which can stay in SAT

  3. don't merge empty layers...

    If you merge some objects from a other max file, max will merge all layers and not only the layers from the merged objects.

    27 votes
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    2 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  4. layer manager should re-open as it was closed

    If a layer is open and you close the layer manager, layer is closed once layer manager is reopened, should open in the state as it was closed

    25 votes
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    2 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  5. Layer Manager - Newly created layers shouldn't be set to default

    When creating a new layer it's incredibly annoying that it becomes the default. I'm constantly setting the default layer back after creating new layers.

    9 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  6. Layer manager to allow rendering of hidden layers

    In layer manager, when you choose to hide layer, it will automatically hide it for viewport AND render. It is possible to view contents of layer in viewport and not in renderer. But it is impossible to hide it in viewport, yet keep it visible in renderer. This would be a great feature for managing huge scenes. Simply if Hide switch would be on, and render switch would remain on, it would hide contents of layer in viewport, but it would be still visible for renderer.

    8 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  7. 8 votes
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    1 comment  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  8. Layer manager object selection

    You should be able to double click object names in layer manager to select them in the scene. Currently you have to click name then right click and select object from the pull down

    7 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  9. Xref scene layers, when hidden, are not hidden when reloading the scene

    When you add an xref scene to your scene, that contains layers, and then hide these layers in the layer manager, the visibility will be ignored when loading the scene again.

    1. Reference a scene with layers in it.
    2. Hide the one of the layers (it will be invisible)
    3. save scene.
    4. load scene (the layer will be shown as visible again)
    5. make layer visible (no change)
    6. hide layer again (layer is hidden)

    7 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  10. Allow "Enter Key" to access OK when creating new layer

    Each time you create new layer. It will show a dialogue and let you type the name of new layer. But the thing is you "can't Enter Key" to accept without using mouse to click OK button. It's a small annoy thing exactly.

    Please let us "Enter Key" to accept without moving the mouse to click.

    6 votes
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    1 comment  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  11. purge empty layers

    Layers editor should have a purge empty layers option.

    5 votes
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    2 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  12. Particle Flow Events are invisible in Layer Menu

    When creating PFlow-Elements the included events are not displayed in the Layer-Dialogue. They also can not be moved and are stuck on some arbitrary layer activated at the time. Therefor can not be turned off by hiding etc. controlled by Layers properly

    Make them visible in the layer-dialogue, so you can access them / hide them, etc. OR make them all relate to one "Master"-P-Flow Element ( but then you may generate multiple PFlow's ...

    4 votes
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    1 comment  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  13. Remember colum width in Layer window.

    Every time you close Max, layer window columns are restored to their default width. Please save this settings.

    3 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  14. Unhide all objects in specific layer

    Button or right-click menu to hide/unhide all objects in selected layer, not the layer itself. I would like to unhide objects in the layer I'm working in without having to
    1. manually unhide all objects in the layer I'm working on
    or
    2. unhide ALL and then hide the layers I'm not working on.

    0 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Layers  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
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