- [Instructor] Whenever setting up a new installation
or even a new user of 3Ds Max, you should go in
and change some of the key preferences for the program.
The preferences dialogue can be found actually
in two different menu items.
We can access the preferences dialogue from the file menu
under file preferences, but that it's actually
a little bit misleading because we're not just setting up
the options for a particular scene file.
This dialogue is going to change the options
for the entire program and all scenes.
So I'm going to go to the other menu item.
I think that's a little bit more logical,
it's under customized preferences
and we have a whole bunch of tabs here and many options.
Of course, we're not going to do all of these
but just the most important ones.
Starting from the general tab
we have the number of scene undo levels
and that is currently defaulted to 100 undos.
And that may sound like a lot, but it's actually not
because 3D is complicated and it's really common
even for experienced users to need to go back
20, 30, 40, 50 maybe even a 100 steps
to get back to where they were.
You can reduce this number if you need to
in the case of limited memory
let's say you've got a system that doesn't really
have very much Ram.
You can save Ram by setting the undo levels
to a lower number but I would only do that
if absolutely necessary.
Moving on in the files tab, in the file handling section
we have an option labeled convert local file paths
to relative, and that is off by default.
However, I strongly recommend
that you enable it by turning on that checkbox.
What this is going to do is it's going to store
all of the asset locations relative to the current project.
So to explain 3ds Max like most 3D programs
utilizes a project folder structure
and it maintains links between all different types of files.
So for example, we'll have a specified folder for scenes
another one for textures, another one for rendered images
and so on.
Now, when this switch is off, 3D Max is going to store
the location of every file in an absolute path
that is it's going to store the location of that asset,
starting with a drive letter or a network volume name.
It's going to store the entire path.
If the switch is on, it's also going to store that path
relative to the current project's route.
And effectively what this means is that you can take
your entire project and all the files within it
and then move that to another location
or change the name of the project root folder.
And this is kind of important if this switch is off
and you're only storing the absolute paths,
then you can run into trouble where 3ds Max
can't find your assets.
And we'll be looking at asset management
in more detail later.
But for now it's important just to have this switch on
so that you don't run into trouble later.
Moving on in the view ports tab down at the bottom
we have a pretty important section here
label display drivers.
This has to do with the technology used to display objects
and images in the view ports.
And the display driver goes by the name of nitrous.
And we have some options.
Basically, You want to keep this at the highest level
of direct 3D that your current hardware will support.
I've got an Invidia GForce GTX 1080 video card
in my computer and that supports up to direct 3D version 11.
The only time you would need to change this
is under extreme circumstances where your hardware
just isn't working right.
So if you see 3ds Max flickering
or you have display corruption,
any kind of issues like that,
the first thing you should do is try to install
a newer version of the hardware driver.
In other words, go to the manufacturer's website
whether that be Invidia or AMD or Intel or whatever,
go to that website, download the latest hardware driver
and install that on your system.
And if that doesn't work
then you can go in here and change up the software driver.
And to do that, you would go into this dialogue here
by clicking choose driver.
And we can actually dumb this down to a lower version
of nitrous and maybe even switch over to a software driver
one that doesn't use the video hardware at all.
You might need to do that in extreme cases
for example, if you're using remote desktop
and logging into another computer remotely
it might not work right with the direct 3D driver.
But like I said, you want to have this set
to the highest level, direct 3D
that your hardware will support.
I'll go ahead and click okay.
And even though I didn't make any changes
I get this warning dialogue that tells me
I need to restart 3ds Max in order for these changes
to take effect.
Okay, and finally, we can go into the help tab up here
just to point out that the help documents for 3D Max
are hosted on the Autodesk will website by default.
If you need the help files to be on your local computer,
maybe you're in a studio that doesn't allow your workstation
to be on the internet, and you can actually
go to local computer network
and download the files and install them.
I'll set this back to Autodesk website,
click okay and then when I exit 3ds Max
all those preferences will be stored.