The Scene panel menu bar contains various options for managing materials and the display of the window in the upper Scene panel.
Some of these choices correspond to buttons on the Selection toolbar.
Selects all entries in the scene.
Selects all materials in the scene.
Selects all maps in the scene.
Deselects all entries.
Inverts the current selection: all selected entries become deselected, and all entries not selected become selected.
This choice is a toggle. When on, selecting a material or object also selects the children of that entry. Default=off.
These choices are toggles that affect the behavior of the Find field on the Find toolbar.
When on, the search string is case sensitive: “house” is not the same as “House”. Default=off.
When on, the search string can use wildcard characters such as * and ?. Default=on.
When on, the search string can use regular expressions; for example, “gr(a|e)y”. Default=off.
These choices correspond to the Display buttons.
When on, the hierarchy displays a thumbnail for each material and map. When off, it displays a generic icon materials and maps. Default=on.
When on, the hierarchy includes materials. When off, it does not show materials at all. Default=on.
When on, the hierarchy of each material includes includes the maps used by that material. Default=on.
When on, the hierarchy of each material includes the objects to which that material is applied. Default=on.
When on, the hierarchy includes sub-materials and maps applied to material channels. Default=off.
When on, the hierarchy display includes unused map channels. Default=off.
These two sorting options are mutually exclusive. They correspond to a pair of Display buttons.
(The default.) While active, the hierarchy is sorted by material name.
While active, the hierarchy is sorted by object.
These choices control the hierarchy display.
Expands the hierarchy to display all entries.
Expands the hierarchy of selected entries.
Expands the hierarchy of all objects.
Collapses the entire hierarchy.
Collapses the hierarchy of selected entries.
Collapses the hierarchy of all materials.
Collapses the hierarchy of all objects.
Opens a file dialog that lets you save the materials in the scene as a material library (.mat) file.
Opens a Select Objects dialog. The names of objects with the active material applied are highlighted. Click to select the objects that have had this material applied.
This choice is unavailable if no materials are selected in the Explorer, or if multiple materials are selected.
Opens the Bitmap / Photometric Path Editor dialog, which lets you manage the paths of bitmaps in the scene.
Opens the Global Settings And Defaults For Bitmap Proxies dialog, which lets you manage how 3ds Max creates and uses proxy versions of bitmaps incorporated in materials. This dialog is a feature of Asset Tracking.
When one or more sub-materials or maps applied to a material are selected, deletes the selected sub-materials or maps.
When on, prevents you from editing cells in the Explorer: clicking a cell has no effect, other than to highlight and select the row it is in. Default=off.
Opens the Configure Columns dialog so you can add columns to the Scene (upper) window. See Columns (Material Explorer Scene Panel).
Displays a submenu that lets you choose which of the Material Explorer toolbars appear.
Saves the current Material Explorer layout so that it appears this way in your next session with 3ds Max.
The layout file for the Material Explorer is called defaultmmaterialexplorer.ini. It is saved in C:\documents and settings\<user name>\local settings\application data\autodesk\3ds max\<version>\enu\plugcfg\explorerconfig\material explorer\. You can revert to the default layout by deleting this file and restarting 3ds Max.