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
  • Top ideas
  • New ideas
  1. 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 →
  2. 6 votes
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    0 comments  ·  General UI  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  3. Attribute order change without losing reactions.

    Connections created via the reaction manager stop to work if the connected attribute changes it's order.

    1 vote
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    1 comment  ·  [admin: Needs review]  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  4. Playback doesn't play without Real Time checked

    If you turn off Real Time playback in the Time Configuration, in most cases the viewport will not play the animation.

    5 votes
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    2 comments  ·  [admin: Bug]  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  5. Keep TGA/TIFF saving preferences with File.

    Keep TGA/TIFF saving preferences with File. Sometimes the save dialog doesn't remember what settings were used, 24bit/32bit etc.. and reverts to what you last used rather than per file basis.

    1 vote
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    1 comment  ·  File Dialogs  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  6. Isoline display affects the Unwrap UVW modifier

    If you place an unwrap UVW modifier above a mesh/turbosmooth with isoline display ticked then the unwrap will only display the isoline cage which means you cant unwrap the smoothed object without displaying the full res mesh in the viewport.

    3 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Texturing/UV  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  7. particle flow half frame/frame inconsistency

    Make the particle count and positioning same in render as in viewport.

    13 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Viewports  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  8. preview creation named similar to scene file automatically

    The make preview dialog should have a checkbox to name the preview after the scene file automatically. That way it is harder to overwrite (_scene is not very revieling what's going on) and you keep track of it easier without manually copy pasting file names back and forth.

    40 votes
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    4 comments  ·  Dialogs  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  9. no unfreeze selected, only freeze selected and unfreeze ALL.

    please add unfreeze selected with frozen objects displayed in an interface like the selection floater

    2 votes
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    0 comments  ·  Dialogs  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  10. Show name in A&D of selected Preset

    when using A&D presets, the material name doesnt show the preset which one has selected, this should be happening and makes life a lot easier

    2 votes
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    2 comments  ·  Materials/Maps  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  11. UI Sensitive parts

    make sure that the UI is only responding to radio buttons and so on, when you tick the button. There are numerous places inside the UI which have the senstivity shattered around palces which are not supposed to be sensitive

    2 votes
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    2 comments  ·  UI, usability, learnabiliy  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  12. Option to change the default Coordinate system

    The Reference Coordinate System pull-down defaults to View. I propose a option to allow the user to change that default. I find myself changing it to World nearly every time I want to move, rotate or scale an object.

    8 votes
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    5 comments  ·  UI, usability, learnabiliy  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  13. Rotating a view from a Top Left view should shift to Perspective

    When in a top, left or right view and using the mouse to rotate the view (alt middle mouse drag), the view turns into ortho. It should turn in perspective instead

    6 votes
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    7 comments  ·  Viewports  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  14. Collapsed Command Panel needs an option to pin it open

    When the command panel is set to "Minimized", there should be an option to easily pin it so that it stays open for a while when you need it to be, and then you could simply unpin it again to set it back to minimized.

    5 votes
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    0 comments  ·  UI, usability, learnabiliy  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  15. No Unhide Selected In Scene Explorer

    There is no simple unhide selected command or icon in the SE to do such a basic task. Instead you have to use the convoluted method of using the unhide by name select dialog. And no, adding the hidden column to the SE IS NOT A SOLUTION!

    7 votes
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    0 comments  ·  General UI  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  16. Frame numbers in previews covered by viewport menus

    When you do a preview and turn on Frame Numbers, the actual numbers are located in the same place on the screen as the viewport menus. Should be easy enough to put them somewhere else.

    8 votes
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    3 comments  ·  Viewports  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  17. 1 vote
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    0 comments  ·  Rendering  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  18. Solid Color Map

    There is no Solid Color Map. This is annoying.

    38 votes
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    6 comments  ·  Materials/Maps  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  19. Zoom in RAM Player

    It would be good to have the ability of zooming in and out when using RAM Player.

    11 votes
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    0 comments  ·  UI, usability, learnabiliy  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
  20. Switching between viewports via hotkeys doesn't remember last view

    I tend to work in one maximized viewport, and it drives me crazy when I switch from a Perspective view to another view via either a keyboard shortcut or the V-key and then want to go back to my previous Perspective view that it simply takes the current view and makes it a 'perspective' view from the same angle. So if I go from Persp to Top, then want to go back to Persp, it shows me a top perspective view instead of my last Perspective viewing angle. The amount of time it takes to navigate back to a similar…

    239 votes
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    40 comments  ·  Viewports  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
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