- Like many 3D programs, Max relies
on a project folder structure to track the links
between various dependent files.
When you open up a scene file
it may have links to other files such
as textures and sounds and maybe photometric data or lots
of other things like dynamic simulation caches and so on.
All that different data needs to be stored somewhere
that the program can find it.
And that's usually done through a project folder.
If you have the exercise files that I provided
with this course
you'll now want to point 3ds Max at that project folder.
If you don't have the exercise files,
then you'll want to create your own project folder.
Let's take a look at creating
a default project folder structure first.
We'll need to create the root folder
from the Windows interface.
We actually can't do that from within 3ds Max.
So I'm going to minimize 3ds Max and within Windows.
I'll create a new folder on my desktop
just right click and choose New Folder
and I'll call it 3ds Max essential and press enter.
Now I've got that empty folder created
and I want to bring 3ds Max back.
I've got that minimized.
And we want to issue a command to
create a default project folder structure.
We can do that from the menus in the file menu.
We've got a whole section for project commands
and we've got one here, create default,
but I actually prefer to use the
project's toolbar instead of the menus.
I've got that displayed here below the main toolbar.
The project's toolbar is
by default displayed on the far right of the main toolbar
but I've just dragged it out here
and positioned it so that we can see it better.
Because the whole reason I like to
use this project's toolbar is
that it displays the path to the currently active project.
And currently the active project is the one
that is created when 3ds Max is installed.
And that's inside the current user's documents folder
but I want to create a new default project folder structure
within that custom folder I just made.
And here's the command we want to issue, create default.
So click on that button
and then we need to browse to the new empty folder.
And that's once again, on my desktop
I'll select 3ds Max Essential and click, select folder.
And that is automatically created all
of those unique sub folders.
And we can investigate
that I'll minimize Max again and go back
to this 3ds Max Essential folder that we just created.
I've got it here in my Explorer window
and we can select that, open it up.
And we see that indeed it does have all the default folders
but they're all currently empty.
Okay, so that's if you need to create a new folder.
Let's talk about setting to an existing folder.
I'll bring 3ds Max back.
And all we need to do is click on this button here
which is, set active project, click on that.
And once again, navigate to the root level
of your project in this case it's, exercise files.
And with that folder selected click, select folder.
And now that path is displayed here.
So if we now go into the file menu and choose, open,
we should be taken to the exercise files, scenes folder
and indeed, that's exactly where we've been taken.
So these are all of the project files for the course.
And if for any reason you're not taken
to this scenes folder, then you can just reset 3ds Max.
That's done by going into the file menu and choosing, reset.
And then in the popup dialogue.
Do you really want to reset?
Click yes and that reset command just wipes out
whatever was in memory.
And now we should have no problem accessing
the exercise files.
That's how to create or set a project folder.