Max Cat is a tool I wrote in Maxscript for 3ds Max. It comes with an array of helpful buttons that diagnose and attempts to fix common mistakes the art team would make. It uses Max’s script editor and listener.

It comes with a built-in face counter for both the total number of faces in the scene, as well as the faces currently selected. It can run quick fixes on the entire project to delete unnecessary pieces of geometry. Things it cannot fix, it will call out in a quick text at the top, and a long version will be printed to the script listener. For finding duplicate faces and skinned vertices without any weight, it will select all offending objects, and the user can then use it to even select all offending faces and vertices within a single mesh. It can finally perform a more in-depth search through the scene’s materials than Max by itself. A list of all used materials is fetched and displayed in a drop down menu, and from there the user can search for the material even if it’s located deep at the bottom of a multi-material.

This tool originated when I asked the artists in my team, “If you had a tool that would do anything you wanted, what would it do?”, and I’m happy to receive news that it has saved many grueling hours of manual work.

Unfortunately, the code itself is not publicly available at this time.