3ds Max offers many options for its display and operation. These options are available on the Preference Settings dialog in a series of tabbed panels.
On the General panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set options for the user interface and for interactivity.
On the Files panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set options relating to file handling. You can choose the program used for archiving and control the options for log file maintenance. And the Auto Backup function lets you save your work automatically at defined intervals.
On the Viewports panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set options for viewport display and behavior.
On the Gamma And LUT panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set options to adjust the Gamma and lookup-table (LUT) values for input and output images and for the monitor display.
On the Rendering panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set options for rendering, such as the default color of ambient light in rendered scenes. The many choices available enable you to reassign the renderers used for production and draft rendering.
On the Animation panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set options relating to animation. Options include displaying animated objects in wireframe viewports, the assignment of sound plug-ins, and controller defaults.
On the Inverse Kinematics panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set options for both applied and interactive inverse kinematics.
You set the display and behavior of the Transform gizmos on the Gizmos panel of the Preference Settings dialog.
On the MAXScript panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set MAXScript and Macro Recorder preferences, enable or disable auto-loading of scripts, set the initial heap size, change font style and size used in the MAXScript editor, and manage all the settings for the Macro Recorder.
On the Radiosity panel of the Preference Settings dialog, you set options for the Modeling Global Illumination with Radiosity.
This panel sets preferences for using the mental ray Renderer and its associated materials and shaders.
The Containers panel sets preferences for using the Container feature; in particular, you can use the Status and Update settings to improve performance.
By default, choosing Help menu Help or otherwise accessing this help opens the help from the Autodesk Website. This panel lets you instead open the help from a local or network drive to which you downloaded and extracted the help system.
