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MAYA to MAX Switching – Plugins and Hotkeys

Hi Guys, the main tutorial section i will be doing is still in progress, for now i am just going to share something with you that will help many animators or generalists that are struggling to switch between MAYA and MAX. Recently i was called in to work as a lead animator on Disney’s Kinect Disneyland Adventures and i had literally not touched 3DS MAX since University having predominantly worked in maya most of the time. So……I went online and tried looking for help with switching between the programs without having to pay for it!!!

This is my solution, it really does help and thanks to “mahreeooce” over at Scriptspot i managed to work without any real complications.

Ok….there are two things you need to do.

1: Download the MEM’s Max to Maya script and install it. [/info][notice]***Please Note*** this is the version i found most useful and it is version 1.1 There is a version 1.2 but i found it a bit buggy and didn’t really need it. Download version 1.2

– Remember, you need to know what operating system you are using and install the appropriate version of the script, so if you are running a “X64bit system” use that installer and vice versa.

2: If you would like to have MAYA shortcuts running in 3DS MAX to help with the switch between and stay familiar with what you are used to then download this HOTKEY setup i have tweaked and copy it to t folder

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2011\ui” or if you are running version 2012 of Max here….

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2012\ui

Disabling the Script

You can temporarily disable the script by pressing the Ctrl+Alt+F3 keyboard combination. Pressing it again will re-enable the script.

And that’s it!!!
You should now have your mouse move and behave like it would do in Maya and your keyboard shortcuts pretty much the same as Maya. Obviously you can change and tweak the keyboard layout and Hotkeys by going to “Customize>Customize User Interface” and play around with the hotkey editor until you get what you are looking for.
Here are the Resources in case some of you missed the deep links in the post above….