As you work in GMAX you’ll often find yourself repeating the same tasks over and over, switching between tabs to get to functions or commands, clicking and clicking away forever over and over … what a drag! And what a waste of time. Luckily for us, the GMAX team has given us the ability to create, save and refine our own custom program interfaces ( what I’ll refer to as the “workspace” ) within the software. This way, you can create customized collections of commands, put them where you want, and really take control of the software. Imagine… a set of commands for modeling that puts all the one’s you need one one toolbar, always at your fingertips. Another set for animation, maybe another specific to a GamePak your using. It’s a reality, and it’s not so bad to set up. Let’s get started!

See all those extra icons and commands on the Object toolbar? From one spot I can create an object, convert it to an editable mesh, UVW map, perform grouping and selection functions and more. It makes this part of the modeling process much faster. All righty then, enough about how amazing it is… here’s how to do it!

you’ll have a window pop open that looks like this: This is where we do it! It’s easy!

Step 2: Let’s make a new toolbar. On the CUI tabs, press ‘toolbar’, then press the ‘new’ button. Anew window will open asking you for a name for the toolbar. Give it any name you like, then press ‘ok’. A small box will appear on the screen with the name of your toolbar across the top...

In the ‘Category’ rollout, you have some options. You can scroll down the list to find what you’re looking for from the ‘All Commands’ section, or you can press the arrow to choose a subcategory to narrow your search. Once you’ve found something you’d like to add to your new toolbar, just left click on it, hold and drag it over to your new toolbar and drop it it in. Keep adding until you’re satisfied you’ve got the buttons and commands you like.

Once done, you can move the toolbar up on to the top of the screens and “dock” it in an empty space, or leave it “undocked” and move it anywhere you’d like. You can add them to any toolbar tab that has space, or as an always-visible toolbar… it’s up to you! Experiment with toolbar placement to find what works the best for you. Before you close out of the CUI window, press the “save” button and give your new user interface a name. ( You can overwrite the default GMAX UI, but maybe save the default setting first just in case…) If you did choose to overwrite the default setting, the next time you start GMAX your new UI will open right up. Otherwise, press “Customize” then “load custom user interface” to select and load the UI you’d like to use. 


Note: Experiment! This tutorial just begins to open up the possibilities of a custom UI. The easier it is to get to the commands you need the easier, faster and more fun it is to create. Hope this helped!