This book is aimed at artists who already know the essentials of modeling and are considering modeling specialization. A big part of specialization involves seeking ways to streamline your workflow. Possibly you're a diploma student and want to level up your 3ds Max skills after a short course, or possibly you're self taught and want to measure the skills you've obtained. If you are starting from scratch, however, this chapter should help you get up to speed. It covers the essential starting points for those making their first launch into 3ds Max.
These are the areas covered in the chapter's topics:
Quick start: Jump into making models
Getting to know the User Interface
Default and custom UI schemes
Switching UI presets
Making changes to hotkeys
Customizing the Quad menu
Making changes to the view layout
Deciding on the best view navigation
Navigation with the ViewCube
Navigation with the Steering Wheel
Displaying your model for modeling
Setting scene units
Searching for content in the scene
Creating your own selection sets with Named Selections
Common changes to 3ds Max default preferences
Determining the hardware shading settings to use
Tip
In this book, we indicate menu, property, and tool keywords in bold. Keywords in the book can be explored via the Index of the 3ds Max menu Help | Autodesk 3ds Max Help
online. Offline documentation can be downloaded via an installer from the usa.autodesk.com
under Home
|
Support
|
Support and Documentation
|
Autodesk 3ds Max
|
Documentation and Help | 3ds Max 2013 Documentation section under 3ds Max / 3ds Max Design 2013 Help Installer, which you should then set active in 3ds Max via the menu Customize | Preferences
| Help
| Local Computer/Network, or you can simply Download it via a button there.