We have a new 3ds Max 2025 version. Nothing revolutionary on this new version, but a lot of improvements on different areas of our tool.
As always for a better understanding in all the small things that changed, is to check Changsoo Eun unoficial list here.
A big one is the rewrite of the menu editing system. This affects quad menus and the top 3dsmax menus. And even it looks not a big difference (other than moving to QT UI), is internally quite big. Allowing for third party developers to create his own menus in a much easier way without needing to deep code it, and will allow users to move the saved menus from max to new max versions with ease.
A big improvement is that now Slate material editor is finally using the standard quad menu from 3dsmax (instead of his own as until now), and this way everyone can personalize, change, or reorganize whatever you need).
This comes with new maxscripts functions to call this menus as needed.
Global search (the one you call with “X”) has been totally rewritten, now using QT is way faster than before. No more grey entries taking unnecessary space. Showcases the last 5 used searches, A new column showcase object category, you can filter and personalize how this search function works, this menu can be docked and be at all times visible, and a lot more useful functions.
Retopology has been updated now is 8% faster. It has a new option to only calculate the preprocess mesh, to create an even triangulated mesh very fast. And a new option to convert mesh to vdb directly.
Mesh cleaner has been updated with 3 new ways to clean bad geometry, zero area uvs, non planar faces, an isolated vertex. For retopology and mesh cleaner “esc” will abort any long calculation while in process.
Color management has been improved, now max starts in “Ocio-default” mode. Bake to texture and vertex paint tools are properly color managed, color conversion tool added on MCG as a new operator, and a lot of improvements in multiple areas.
Slate received some fixes, other than the customizable menus, in SME, now we have the “view image” to easily isolate the current image. Show Shaded Material in Viewport functionality for bitmaps assigned to a nested materials, and other fixes.
USD has been updated to 0.7 now the importer supports animated attributed from cameras and lights, and support for blendshapes as morphers. And other improvements that you can check on changsoon list.
Now the lights shadow resolution on viewport is 4048px instead of 512 px, resulting with crispier/detailed shadows, displaying smaller detail directly in viewport.
Arnold has been updated to 7.3.1, with big improvements on GPU rendering making it faster than before, and the Arnold Render View is dockable. New snapshoot tools, automatic denoising from start, (even on negative preview samples),
Other improvements that may be not directly appreciate by the user but necessary has been the conversion to QT6 to pyside6, and other internal libraries, where you could appreciate some speed gains here and there, improvements on maxscripts and a lot of bug fixes, that again, check the Changsoo Eun complete list.
For even more videos, check changsoo playlist on youtube with a collection of examples using max 2025: