MAX2C4D Interface Guide — Every Button Explained

How the Two Dialogs Fit Together

The 3ds Max side exports your scene into a folder — geometry as scene.abc, materials, lights, cameras and render settings as scene_materials.json, plus a tex/ folder with copied textures. The Cinema 4D side imports that folder and rebuilds everything as native C4D objects and shaders.

Since V2 that export step is optional. The Native reader route skips it entirely — MAX2C4D decodes the .max itself, with no 3ds Max on the machine. The two routes that do use an export are the same route cut in half: 3ds Max builds the export and imports it in one go, Existing export imports one that already exists.

The Export Dialog (3ds Max)

Open it from the MAX2C4D toolbar icon or menu inside 3ds Max. It does one job: turn the current scene into a folder Cinema 4D can read.

Export path

Options

Actions

The Import Dialog (Cinema 4D)

Open it from Extensions → MAX2C4D Import in Cinema 4D. This is where scenes are rebuilt, and where you choose which of the three routes reads the .max file.

Three tabs run along the top. Import is this one, and it is the only one that needs a .max file. Convert works on the Cinema 4D document you already have open and never touches a .max — covered below. Setup holds the handful of settings you fix once per installation.

Read with

The three old import buttons are now one choice, because they only ever answered one question: who opens the .max file. Pick a route, then press the single IMPORT button. A line under the choice says what the route does, and a framed line under that says what is about to come in — so the click is never blind.

Import options — Scene

The Import tab holds what you decide for this import, in two labelled groups — Scene and Materials & textures — with the IMPORT button under them. What you set once per installation lives in the Setup tab instead. Every value is remembered, so nothing here needs revisiting between two imports of the same kind.

Import options — Materials & textures

Setup

The third tab: what you set once, not once per import.

The Convert Tab (No .max Involved)

The other two tabs answer “who reads this .max”. This one does not read a file at all: it rebuilds the Cinema 4D document you already have open onto a different render engine, in place. Same window, because it is the same machinery underneath — the engine writers used on the way in from 3ds Max are the ones used here.

It reads a Corona or V-Ray scene and writes Corona, V-Ray or Redshift — four routes, since a scene never converts to the engine it already uses. A Redshift scene cannot be the starting point yet: Redshift materials are node graphs rather than flat parameter lists, and that reader is still being written. Open a Redshift document on this tab and CONVERT SCENE greys out with that reason on the line underneath, rather than failing after you click.

Every route, every material class and the full list of limits: the scene converter page.

Status Bar & Footer Buttons

Both dialogs end with the same small toolbar: a status line, and Website / License / version buttons.

Frequently Asked Questions