In an effort to avoid doing homework, I’ve decided to write out a quick explanation of how you can modify 3dsMax to use UI tabs. It seems the usual solution online is to upload your UI scheme without discussion, which usually leads to people saying “Eh, I guess this’ll do.” However, this is a dangerous way of doing things because some UIs may be poorly constructed and over-write access to new features (i.e. using a Max 7 UI set up in Max 9 will deny you access to stuff like paint selection).

Let’s go through and talk about what makes tabs, and how you can make them into whatever you want!

For starters, open your defaultUI.cui or MaxStartUI.cui file in notepad or your favorite text editor. You’ll see a long list of names and values like “WindowCount=8″. Now you don’t have to know what all of these mean; just the important ones like rank, item#, and the stuff in brackets.

To begin, your’s should look something like this:
[CUIData]
WindowCount=9
[CUIWindows]
F000=S:Command Panel
...
[Command Panel]
Rank=0
SubRank=0
Hidden=0
...
[Main Toolbar]
Rank=0
SubRank=0
Hidden=0
...
...
What this file is doing is defining all the buttons, pull-downs, and toggles in your interface setup. What you want to do is define a new bar that will contain your tabs. To do this you would insert the tabs code between the end of [command panel] and the start of [Main Toolbar]. Make sure to change the values in Rank=# so that they are a) in order, and b) give a lower number to the tab panel than to the main toolbar. If the main toolbar is a higher rank, it will appear above the tabs, and vice versa.

Here’s where you would insert it:

[Command Panel]
Rank=0
SubRank=0
Hidden=0
FRect=673 182 865 1089
DRect=1204 39 1388 770
DRectPref=2147483647 2147483647 -2147483648 -2147483648
DPanel=8
Tabbed=0
TabCt=0
CurTab=-1
CurPos=8 1204 39 1388 770
CType=4
[TAB_BAR_STUFF]
Rank=1
SubRank=0
Hidden=0
...
...
[Main Toolbar]
Rank=2
SubRank=0
Hidden=0
FRect=1109 212 1181 271
DRect=0 0 1315 39
DRectPref=2147483647 2147483647 -2147483648 -2147483648
DPanel=1
Tabbed=0
TabCt=0
CurTab=-1
CurPos=1 0 0 1315 39
CType=1
ToolbarRows=1
ToolbarType=3
ItemCount=43
...
Before you proceed, some words of caution!