What's New in 3ds Max 2027

Welcome to the 3ds Max 2027! You can access the 3ds Max 2027 Update from your Autodesk Account.

Read on to learn about the new features and updated workflows you'll find in this release. For technical details including what's fixed, please see the 3ds Max 2027 Release Notes.

Introducing Smart Bevel

3ds Max 2027 introduces Smart Bevel for post-Boolean intersections, allowing you to create cleaner and more intricate bevels with ease.

Extrude modifier: Custom direction

In 3ds Max 2027, you can use extrude Splines with orientation and direction instead of using only local Z.

Spline Chamfer modifier updates

Updates to the Spline Chamfer Modifier let you use fixed radius for consistent circular corners.

Introducing Noise Plus

The new Noise Plus modifier comes with powerful new fractal types, animation ability, and tiling controls to push your results further.

Introducing Autodesk Assistant (Tech Preview)

3ds Max 2027 introduces Autodesk Assistant, an AI-powered tool that helps you quickly find information about features and workflows directly within the product.

New Field Helper

The new Field Helper provides more precise component selections for manipulating items, such as driving selections.

Viewport grid and display improvements

We refreshed the viewport grid and background display, so you can work in a cleaner, more focused environment. This also resolves usability issues with grids that users found limiting in the past.

Arnold for 3ds Max 5.9.0 plug-in

Updates to MaxtoA since 3ds Max 2026.3 include lightweight USD instancing, a new hair scattering mode, more flexible light sampling, and other enhancements and bug fixes.

What else is new?

Boolean modifier updates	Improved recursive welding in the Boolean modifier produces cleaner geometry by reducing internal faces and removing redundant edges and vertices. This improvement applies to newly created Booleans in 2027, resulting in better mesh quality with less manual cleanup needed.
Noise (legacy) modifier updates	The Noise (legacy) modifier now uses the modern Qt interface and supports Paramblock2 for user-defined defaults. The animated Phase parameter also now uses linear interpolation instead of ease in/out, providing more predictable animation behavior.
Array modifier updates	New distribution options for the Array modifier include surface distribution with Z growth, allowing objects to follow surface contours while growing in height. Pack Element distribution on splines provides better spacing control when distributing objects along paths.
Attribute Transfer modifier improvements	Attribute Transfer modifier operations now run significantly faster. This improvement speeds up workflows that rely on attribute transfer for texture painting, vertex color work, and data migration between meshes.
Flow Retopology relocation	We moved Flow Retopology to a new location under Tools > Flow Retopology, so it's easier to find and access as part of your core modeling workflow.
Retopology performance update	Faster ReForm processing means quicker results and improved support for meeting quad target goals, with more reliable and consistent outputs.
Shape Map performance update	The Shape Map system now processes much faster, reducing wait times when working with shape keys and morph targets. This improvement makes shape-based workflows more responsive, especially when dealing with complex character rigs or detailed morphing operations.
Shell Material performance update	The Shell Material now evaluates sub-materials more efficiently. When the active viewport material hasn't changed, the material system skips unnecessary re-evaluation, improving viewport performance during material editing and scene navigation.
Volume Select's soft selection performance improvements for polys	The performance of Volume Select's soft selection has been improved when applied to a poly-based object. This delivers smoother, more responsive soft selection performance on high-poly objects, enabling faster and more efficient modeling workflows in 3ds Max.
Map to Bitmap generation	Converting procedural maps to bitmaps for viewport display or rendering is now faster. This improvement also applies when resizing bitmap images in 3ds Max, making material workflows more efficient when working with legacy maps or when preparing textures for real-time display.
Foundation updates	3ds Max 2027 includes updates to core technologies: .NET Core 10, Qt 6.8, C++ 20, RealDWG, and ATF (Autodesk Translation Framework). These updates provide improved stability, performance, and compatibility with modern systems and file formats.
New environment variables	New environment variables let you customize 3ds Max startup and data locations. You can define custom splash image locations, specify the maxstart folder path, and set where Populate data loads from. Additional controls let you skip loading plugins from default folders, giving you more control over which plugins load at startup.
Color Management	You can now sample the underlying colors from the scene space in windows that support it, including the viewports and Rendered Frame Window. Click and hold on the eyedropper icon in the Color Selector dialog to select Sample Display Color or Sample Scene Color from the fly-out. In addition, 3DS Max now uses the latest version of the OpenColorIO library: OCIO v2.5.1.
USD for 3ds Max 0.14.0	USD for 3ds Max v0.14.0 focuses on stability, production readiness, and improved integration with the 2027 plug-in ecosystem.
Substance 3.0.6	3ds Max 2027 includes Substance 3.0.6, which uses engine version 9.0.0 and includes stability and other fixes.
DirectX 9 removal	Support for DirectX 9 has been removed. This change aligns 3ds Max with modern graphics standards and ensures better compatibility with current graphics hardware and drivers.