Essentials for 3dsmax
This column is for new Max user's. It's a punch list of things you may need along the way. I should clarify that these are things i needed along my way. My trail went through vrml and Poser and i needed the exporting abilities much more than a standard max user.
Max plugins are third-party add-ons to max which can make your life easier. Some plug-ins cost a couple hundred dollars, some are free. I haven't bought any plug-ins yet, but other devepers have and it shows. You can take your mesh to another level of realism with some of these plugins. Plugins are created in VC++, or used to be, sadly the new .NET architecture is now the standard from Autodesk. This means, if you want to build your own plugins, you need the .NET package. Which means you need to install IIS ad naseum. I will do it, as soon as i can dedicate a machine to the overhead. A few VC++6.0 friendly plugin templates are available, some older plugins may work in newer max and vice versa. It looks to be pretty version specific though, meaning max 3 plugins are for max3, max 4 for max4 so on.
First up and deserving of it's placement, Habware. In fact, if habware ever goes down, i'm not sure what new max users would do:) Although perhaps version 7 of max doesn't need some of these plug-ins. Anyways, here's the site: Habware Plugins. A bakers dozen of free plugins for 3dsmax.
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