For those who don’t know the tool: glTF is a compact 3D delivery format for moving scenes and assets from DCC applications into realtime, web and commerce pipelines. This plug-in adds two-way exchange directly to Autodesk 3ds Max. Because Autodesk couldn’t be arsed to update.
Open source in both directions
The new glTF 2.0 importer and exporter gives 3ds Max users a roundtrip path for .gltf and .glb assets. Khronos sponsored the conversion of Hayashi Satoshi’s established commercial plug-ins into an open-source project released under the Apache 2.0 licence.
Independent developer Josef Wienerroither contributed 3ds Max plug-in development and validation. Eric Chadwick of DGG supported testing, workflow feedback and documentation. Source code, user documentation and issue tracking are available through the project repository.
What can a glTF asset contain?
A glTF 2.0 asset can describe a complete runtime scene rather than just a polygon mesh. Its scene graph stores objects as nodes with names, parent-child relationships and transforms. Those nodes can reference meshes, materials, cameras, lights, skins and animations.
Mesh data can include vertex positions, normals, tangents, texture coordinates, vertex colours and indices. A mesh may contain several primitives with different materials, as well as morph targets for blend shapes. Character assets can carry joints, skin weights and inverse bind matrices for linear blend skinning.
The core material model uses metallic-roughness PBR. It can store base colour, metallic and roughness values, normal maps, ambient occlusion, emissive maps, alpha modes and double-sided rendering. Extensions broaden this to clearcoat, sheen, transmission, volume, index of refraction, specular response, anisotropy and other surface properties.
Textures can be referenced as external image files or embedded in the asset. Texture samplers define filtering and wrapping, while extensions add UV transforms and compressed texture formats. Cameras may use perspective or orthographic projection, and animations can drive node transforms, morph-target weights and supported material or property values.
A .gltf asset normally consists of a JSON scene description accompanied by binary buffers and image files. A .glb packages the description, binary data and optionally the images into one binary container. Geometry and texture compression can reduce delivery size further.
What the importer brings into 3ds Max
The importer reads .gltf and .glb assets and reconstructs their supported contents as a 3ds Max scene. It brings in meshes, splines, shapes, cameras and lights, recreates the node hierarchy and transforms, and converts supported PBR materials and textures into Max-side material representations.
Supported animation, deformation, skinning and instancing data can enter Max with the asset. Geometry- and texture-compression extensions are decoded during import, avoiding a separate conversion pass before the scene can be inspected, edited, animated or rendered.
This is more than opening a model file: the importer is intended to restore enough scene structure for an asset to continue through a Max-based production pipeline. The exact visual result will still depend on material conversion, extension support and the renderer used in Max.
What the exporter writes
The exporter converts supported 3ds Max scene content into standard .gltf or .glb assets. It writes geometry, hierarchy, transforms, cameras, lights, material conversions, textures, animation and deformation data. It can also create multiple material variants, allowing one object to carry selectable looks inside the same glTF asset.
The resulting asset is designed for delivery to realtime engines, web viewers, configurators, 3D-commerce systems and other glTF-compatible applications. Supported compression options reduce geometry or texture size for those targets.
glTF is a delivery format, not a complete project archive. Modifier stacks, procedural construction history, renderer-specific shader networks, simulation setups, plug-in objects and other Max-only authoring data are not part of the glTF 2.0 core model. Such content must be converted or baked into supported geometry, materials, textures and animation before export.
Roundtrip therefore means that supported glTF data can enter Max, be edited and leave again in the same delivery format. It does not promise a lossless copy of every Max-specific production feature. Test representative materials, rigs, animation and compressed assets before making it the only bridge between departments.
Builds from Max 2020 to 2027
Precompiled ZIP packages are available for 3ds Max versions 2020 through 2027. Installation places the plug-ins in Max’s Import and Export menus. Future work is intended to include KHR_interactivity and the forthcoming glTF 2.1 specification.
As ever with a new interchange tool, test representative materials, animation and compressed assets before putting it between production departments. Roundtrip is a lovely word until one shader decides to interpret it creatively.
