Forums & News

Discreet 3dsmax Webboard
This is the official 3dsmax forum which is run and moderated by discreet themselves. This is probably the best resource for 3dsmax users as many of the devlopers and long time users of 3dsmax frequent the board and also act as its moderators, for instance swami lama is the maxscript moderator.

CG Talk 3dsmax Forum
The CG Talk forums are a general CG resource with topics on many peices of software including Maya, XSI, Houdini, Photoshop and Zbrush. It also has a dedicated 3dsmax topic which sees a lot of traffic. This board tends towards the less experienced users but also tends to have a good team spirit and some energetic initiatives to share information via focused topics.

Max Underground
Max Underground is a long established portal to max related matters. It has sections on news, reviews and articles. Well worth a look..

Orbaz Particle Forum
This forum is dedicated to talking purely about particles, both on max and on other systems. The moderator is Oleg Bayborodin, the creator of Particle Flow.

Max In Film
This page is maintained by a friend on mine in the UK, Keiron Helsdon. This page is a great resource for those that wish to know just which films 3dsmax has been used on and where applicable, what it was used for on each film. Its an interesting read, with some films on the list that many would not have realised that 3dsmax played a part in.


Maxscript

Scriptspot
Scriptspot has become the number one repository for Maxscript tools. Its success has come from its great organisation, if you need a tool, you'll find it here and you'll probably find several other you didn't realise you needed whilst looking. A definate must for any serious 3dsmax user.

Boboland
Borislav Petrov has long been recognised as one of the leading experts on Maxscript . Not only is he a leading expert, but also a very nice guy and it has been partialy down to his enthusiams for Maxscript that the tool has become what it is today. His site is an excellent resource both for those learning Maxscript.

Grant Adam
Grants website has a number of usefull scripted tools for the discerning 3dsmax user. One was even inspired by Chris Thomas's request i.e. for a character node that has more than two different states for your character rigg. Get it and other gems here...




Plug-ins

Maxplugins
This is the number one resource for 3dsmax plugins. It hosts all of the currently available free plugins as well as holding a listing of all of the commercially available ones also.. Very orderd and comprehensive, invaluable.

Orbaz Technologies
This site is the host to the software of Oleg Bayborodin, the creator of Particle Flow no less... Have a look here for some great commercial expansion sets for Particle Flow as well as some free plugins for our favourite particle system.

Turbosquid
Turbosquid has a wide range of comercial 3dsmax plugins for sale. It also acts as an agent for many excellent modellers.

Animus Artis
Quite an interesting site this one, as the artist who runs it seems to be agnostic in his support of software, which is never a bad thing. Have a look on here for some interesting tips, approaches and plugins for 3dsmax, Maya and XSI.




Rigging

Paul Neale
Paul, apart from being one of our instructors is regarded as being one of the leading character rigging experts working within the 3dsmax field. His web site is a good source of free information on both rigging and maxscript.

Kees Rijnen
Kees has been a long time team member at Bioware, the home of many recent video game hits. He is an expert on character rigging and he also a Maxscript expert. His most recent project, Puppet Shop, is now complete and offers a wealth of new features based on Max's already comprehensive bones and IK system. Why not get invovled and help him and yourself by using it in production or for your own animation and rigging?