Obviously you expect to get back what you've put into your projects, valuable time, but have you been putting in too much when you didn't have to?
Everybody has to face that tight deadline from time to time, whether you're a freelancer or working at a CG company the faster you finish your projects the better! Of course you start working faster when you become more experienced with 3ds max but there are still a lot of things you can do to increase you're working speed, let's get started!
1. User Interface Customization
There are many ways to adjust the interface of 3ds max, not only the look of it but also the so called hotkeys or keyboard shortcuts. When you install 3ds max for the first time they are already defined for you but not adjusted to your specific needs, you can find a hotkey map by going to Help> Hotkey Map.
Another personal preference i have is changing the interface to darker colors, although this doesn't speed up your workflow it's easier on my eyes when I'm working on projects for a longer time, so it is helpful to change the UI colors.
You can also find an entire tutorial on User Interface customization on enjoycg.com
2. Render Region 
Render region is a simple yet handy tool which lets you render only part of a viewport, so if you've made changes to a particular model or shader in your scene you can save yourself a lot of render time by using this feature.
click the read more button for more tips...
3.Full size viewports
Sometimes you need to adjust small details on a model or view something from just one side instead of all four viewports. The 'maximize viewport toggle' button turns the selected viewport into one large viewport, the button can be found in the bottom right hand side of your 3ds max interface by default. Using this function can really speed up modeling of detailed parts and makes selecting of vertices, edges or polygons far less tedious, this also brings me to the next point, selecting things faster.
4. Select those edges quickly!
Modeling withing 3ds max is often done with the editable poly modifier, sometimes it's boring and slow to select a lot of edges or polygons needed for chamfering or extruding respectively.
By using loops, rings, and toggling between 'window/crossing' selection you can drastically decrease the time needed for selecting parts of your model.
5. Preview Final Gather
a new feature in max 9 with mental ray lets you see a low quality preview to show the general look of the render can save you a lot of time, you can spot mistakes and cancel the render before wasting minutes or even hours waiting for the final high quality render.
That's it for now, I'm sure this can speed up your workflow by about one third or even more, depending on how far you go with customizing your UI.
Do you have more ideas to speed up working with 3ds max? Or maybe you don't agree with what i posted here? comments are welcome.
discuss this topic to forum
