New updates in 3ds Max 2025

Autodesk 3ds Max – one of the best and basic tool for 3D artists and studios released 3ds Max version 2025 in March 2024. In this version, it updated Retopology Tools, CAT toolset, OCIO color management, and the Arnold and USD plugins, and reworked global search and menu customization. Let’s see new updates in 3ds Max 2025 in this article.

The Retopology Tools is first introduced in 3ds Max 2021.3, now has been updated to improve performance. It is automatically included in your installation of the latest version of 3ds Max.

The biggest improvement in this repotology tools – with Autodesk Reform algorithm based – is that processing time are now up to 8% faster than the previous version. The performance depends on the input mesh, so the boost many vary.

Moreover, preprocessing and OpenVDB remeshing are now available as stand-alone processes

In this new version, 3ds Max has fixed some “long-standing issues” in CAT, 3ds Max’s Character Animation Toolkit plugin. CAT now will be more stable when loading or saving data, deleting CAT objects or using the Layer Manager, and copy/pasting layers should work correctly with Extraction mode.

OpenColorIO now become the default mode for color management in new scenes, making it easier to implement a modern color pipeline.

In this version 3ds Max 2025, it also includes many improvements such as: the fully color-managed VertexPaint tool, new Color Space Conversion process operator, the Bake to Texture tool now enable us to select the color space for output files, etc.

To configure color management to suit the needs of your project, you can select Color Management Settings dialog (Rendering > Color Management). To revert to how color management worked by default in previous versions of 3ds Max, set Color Management Mode to Gamma Workflow.

3ds Max has a new Menu Editor, allowing you to customize 3ds Max menus and quad menus easier. You can add, rename or remove menu and quad menu items, create new separators and sub-menus, well as re-order menus. You can also save your customize menu configurations and use them in future versions when you upgrade.

The global search in this update is modernized, with an expanded functionality such as displaying the last 5 used items, extended results with toolclips, double clicking to enact commands and ability to dock the search window.

You can click an empty space in the Viewport, then press X to open Global Search feature. Now when you type a word, it will appear a list of commands with the word within. You can also select the gear icon to toggle new search settings to save time hunting through menus.

Updated Universal Scene Description (USD) plug-in allows artists to import animations, including animated light and camera, as well as blendShape.

• • • • Import animations – camera and light: you can now import USD animations of camera and light attributes into 3ds Max.
      • Import animations – blendShapes: you can also import USD blendShapes as Morphers into 3ds Max.
      • Ability to select and move USD primsin the viewport while in the prim sub-object mode.
      • Support for multi/sub-object materials in USD exporter:the functionality of the Material Switcher to accommodate the use of multi/sub-object materials when exporting a USD file.

3ds Max’s integration plugin for Autodesk’s Arnold renderer for 3ds Max has been updated, with changes like rewriting a “large part” of Arnold’s GPU render engine to use OptiX 8, making start-up “significantly” faster, and improving performance scaling on multiple GPUs. Pretty the same as updates for Maya.

The GPU engine also now supports multiple render sessions.

MAXtoA also now supports for dithered samples in progressive and adaptive rendering, generating “nicer noise distributions” at lower AA sample counts.

Other changes include support for global light sampling in volumes, support for toon light group AOVs, and a new Overlay imager for printing text over rendered images.

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Thank you & Happy Rendering!

Source and images: help.autodesk.com, cgchannel.com