8
Managing Files 15
discard your current scene and revert to t he held
scene at any ti me.
M ana ging Files
File-management dialogs
3ds Max supports many ty pes of fi les for working
w ith plug-ins, image maps, models from other
programs, rendering images and animations, and
of course saving and opening your scene files.
File dialogs (such as Open, S ave, Save As)
uniformly remember the previous path you used,
and default to that location.
Conf iguring File Paths
The locations that 3ds Max searches to locate all
file types are specified on the Customize m enu >
Configure Paths dialogs (page 3–852)
.
You can choose to open and save files in any path
location. The Config ure Paths dialog contains four
panels for the general categor ies of support files.
Setting General File Paths
The
File I/O panel (page 3–856)
contains paths for
most of the standard support files. You can specify
one path for each of file types 3ds Max uses.
Setting Plug-In File Paths
Many features of 3ds Max are implemented as
plug-ins. This means you can change and extend
3ds Max functionality by adding new plug-ins
from A utodesk Media and Entertainment or from
third-party developers.
You tell 3ds Max where to find additional plug-in
filesbyaddingpathentriesonthe
3rd Party
Plug-Ins panel (page 3–857)
. If you place all of
your plug-ins in a single directory, plug-in file
management can become messy. That’s why the
program supports multiple entries on the 3rd
Party Plug-Ins panel.
Setting Bitmap, FX, and Download File Paths
The
External Files panel (page 3–855)
contains
multiple path entries that the program searches
for
image files (page 3–657)
,
photometric files
(page 2–1172)
,downloadedfiles(via
i-drop (page
3–524)
), and
FX files (page 3–1040)
.Imagefiles