File menu
- Export Graph / Export Graph Selection
- Choose this option to export your graph, or the selected nodes of your graph, for use in a different scene.
- Import Graph
- Choose this option to replace the current graph network by importing a previously saved one.
- Merge Graph
- Choose this option to import a previously saved graph network and merge it with your current graph.
Edit menu
- Copy / Paste
- Use these copy and paste options to duplicate your nodes.
Group menu
- Create Group
- You can create a group to encapsulate a set of nodes inside another node. To create a group, select the nodes that you want to group and then choose Create Group. You can even nest groups. For more information, see Working with ShaderFX Groups.
- Ungroup
- Select your group node and then choose this menu option to ungroup the encapsulated nodes.
- Make Group Unique
- This feature allows you to make changes to your group, but only limit your changes to a specific scene. Select your group node and then this menu option. A tooltip appears indicating that the group is now unique and does not refer to the node on disk. Any changes you now make are only applied to the current scene and are not saved on disk and not propagated to other scenes.
- Save Group to Disk
-
Save your group to disk and it is thereafter available from the right-click menu and can be added to any network. This feature is useful if you want to reuse the same set of nodes and connections multiple times. See Save a ShaderFX Group Node to Disk.
Tools menu
- Compute Graph
-
Each time you update the ShaderFX editor, the scene view also updates automatically.
If you notice that this is affecting performance, you can change your settings to only update the scene when you choose to compute manually.
To do this, first enable Settings
Manually Compute Graph, then choose Tools Compute Graph each time you want to manually update your scene.
Settings menu
- Play Animated Shaders
- Choose this option to visualize the animation for animated shaders.
- Manually compute graph
- Enable this option to manually update your scene (instead of automatically). See Tools menu > Compute Graph for more information.
- Lock Group to Sides
- By default, the group nodes are locked to the sides of the ShaderFX editor. Disable this option to customize their location and move the nodes.
- Overwrite System Nodes
- By default, you cannot overwrite nodes that are provided with 3ds Max. To do so, you must enable this option. Note: Overwriting system nodes provided by 3ds Max is not recommended.
- Use 3dsMax Control Scheme
- Choose this option to switch to 3dsMax mouse navigation mode.
- Show Property Panel
- Choose this option to show the Properties panel within the ShaderFX editor. This panel allows you to change the attributes of your graph nodes.
- Show Swatch Compile Errors
- Choose this option so that, if your render swatch cannot be calculated, a tooltip appears at the bottom right corner of the ShaderFX editor, indicating the error.
- Show Node ID
- While active, each node label also shows the node's numeric ID number.