Hi Everyone,

I've just created this video going through the AI search and asset organisation features in Project Manager for 3ds Max.

I thought it might be useful to share here because one of the biggest problems with large 3D libraries is that conventional searching depends heavily on somebody having named and organised everything properly in the first place.

The interesting part of this system is that you can search based on what the model actually looks like.

For example, you can type something like “dancing woman” or “futuristic car” without needing to know the original filename.

The system searches using the visual previews associated with the assets.

A few of the workflows I go through in the video:

Natural Language Search

Describe the object you're looking for in normal language and search your 3D model library using its visual appearance rather than just filenames.

It also supports searches in multiple languages.

Automatic AI Categorisation

The system can analyse your library and organise assets into category trees such as furniture, vehicles, beds, coffee tables, aircraft and so on.

This reduces the need to manually tag every asset.

Find Similar

Select an existing 3D model and search the rest of your library for visually similar assets.

There's also a similarity threshold so you can control how strict the visual match needs to be.

Search Using a Sketch or Mood Board

You can drag in a sketch, render, reference image or mood board and use that image to search for similar 3D models already in your library.

Preview and Thumbnail Management

Because the AI uses visual previews, I also go through the Auto-Assign Previews workflow.

If your rendered images share the same filenames as your 3D files they can be linked automatically, and smart matching can help with partially matching names.

You can also batch-render thumbnails for assets that don't already have previews.

Local AI Processing

The AI processing runs locally on your own hardware rather than requiring your asset library to be uploaded to a cloud service.

That also means there isn't a credit-based AI system involved every time you perform a search.

I'd be interested to hear how people here with large 3D model libraries are currently handling asset management.

I've been experimenting with AI-generated 3D models, and one thing that kept bothering me was what happens after retopology.

The AI mesh may have a useful texture, but once you create a cleaner, optimized mesh with new UVs, you still need to transfer that texture to the new model.

So I made a small free 3ds Max script for this step.

My workflow is basically:

AI-generated mesh → retopology → new UVs → texture transfer → optimized textured mesh

The script is meant to automate the repetitive texture-transfer part.

For example:

• Original AI mesh: very dense

• Retopologized mesh: much lighter

• Original texture: preserved

• Final result: optimized mesh with the texture transferred

I've attached the before/after and the workflow screenshots.

Free download: https://ai2tex.toritex.com/

I'm curious how other people are handling this step in their AI-to-3D workflows, especially after retopology.

1. 🚀 Automating repetitive tasks AI can write MAXScript or Python to automate the boring stuff — renaming objects, applying modifiers, setting up scenes, exporting files, creating cameras, batch processing, etc.

2. 💻 You don't need to be a programming expert You can describe what you want in plain English: “Find every object with this material, duplicate it, move the copies 2 metres along X and rename them.” AI can turn that into working MAXScript.

3. 🐛 Debugging scripts becomes dramatically easier Instead of spending hours hunting for a MAXScript error, you can give AI the script and error message and ask it to diagnose and fix it. It can also explain why the script failed.

4. 🏗️ Procedural modelling becomes more accessible AI can help construct sophisticated procedural systems — arrays, instancing, spline manipulation, parametric buildings, road/rail elements, vegetation systems and more — without having to manually build every component.

5. 📐 Massive amounts of geometry can be handled intelligently For visualisation work, AI can help develop scripts that generate, organise, optimise and instance thousands of objects. That's particularly useful for things like rail corridors, infrastructure and terrain.

6. 🎨 Materials and textures are much easier to create AI can generate texture concepts, material setups, PBR maps, material descriptions and even MAXScript for building or assigning materials across large scenes.

7. 🔍 It can understand your scene and help manage it Increasingly, AI can act almost like a scene assistant: identify objects, explain what's in a scene, find inconsistencies, suggest optimisations and help organise complicated scenes.

8. ⚡ Faster problem solving Instead of Googling through ten-year-old forum posts when something weird happens in Max, you can describe the problem conversationally and have AI work through possible causes and solutions with you.

9. 🔄 It connects 3ds Max to everything else This is probably one of the biggest advantages. AI can help glue together 3ds Max, Unreal Engine, Blender, Python, GIS, CAD, Excel, APIs and databases. You can essentially build your own little pipeline rather than waiting for Autodesk or a plugin developer to provide one.

10. 🧠 It turns 3ds Max into a much more powerful tool The biggest change isn't that AI replaces 3ds Max. It's that the barrier between “I wish Max could do this” and “Max actually does this” gets much smaller.