3ds Max : animation - modeling - effects - lighting - maxscript

3ds Max is one of the most widely-used off the shelf 3D animation programs by the general public. It has strong modeling capabilities, a flexible plugin architecture and a long heritage on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is mostly used by video game developers, TV commercial studios and architectural visualisation studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie previsualisation.

Dynamics
3ds Max has traditionally come with several basic particle emitters. As of version 8, there are 6 basic particle emitters exhibiting specific behaviors. The traditional particle emitters are Spray, Snow, Blizzard, PArray, PCloud, and Super Spray. Rendering
Rendering is 3DS Max's default. Max's scanline renderer is fairly robust compared to many similar packages' out-of-the-box offerings. Several advanced features have been piggy-backed onto the scanliner over the years, such as global illumination, radiosity and ray tracing.

Modeling
This is a basic method, in which one models something using only boxes, spheres, cones, cylinders and other predefined objects from the list of Predfined Standard Primitives or a list of Predefined Extended Primitives. One may also apply boolean operations, including subtract, cut and connect.Maxscript
MAXScript is a built-in scripting language, and is used for a myriad of functions in MAX. Plugin modules can be created entirely in MAXscript.
Character Studio - this was a plugin which since version 4 of Max is now integrated in 3D Studio Max helping user to animate virtual characters. The system works using a character rig or "Biped" which is pre-made and allows the user to adjust the rig to fit the character they will be animating.

3ds Max : Animation, Modeling, Effects, Lighting, Maxscript, Rendering ...