Click here to skip my boring chitchat and go straight to the solution.
So, it’s one of THOSE days. You arrive at work, turn on the computer and start up 3d max. And then you feel that something is wrong.
Your shortcuts don’t work anymore.
“What happened?”
“Oh wait I know, I should probably click the “keyboard shortcut override toggle” button.”
You click it. Nothing.
You click it again. Nothing.
Damn. You now realized that this is going to take a little more time. Time you don’t have. Why now? Why does this always happen when you don’t have the time?
So the next step is, to check if your keyboard shortcuts are still registered.
Yep, still there. Oh and btw Autodesk, Im not sure about versions above 3d max 2012 but could you please make the keybindlist resizable or something, I can barely see what the complete keybind is without dragging the columns to the right, which is just ridiculous.
Ok, so we know the keybinds are set but perhaps the file isn’t loaded correctly.
So first, JUST in case, we SAVE the current keybinds list into a new file “MaxStartUI2018.kbd”. And then reload the older keybinds file MaxStartUI.kbd IF you have it.
That doesnt work either. Lets now reload the newly saved “MaxStartUI2018.kbd”.
Nope, still nothing. SIGH!
Well, I guess this is getting more annoying than expected. Time to ask our buddy google for some answers.
A quick search later show most of the solutions are for 3d max 2015 versions and up, but there was one forum post that brought me a little bit closer to cause of my problem.
In one particular CGTALK forum post a user called AJ suggests to:
go to
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\ 2015 – 64bit\
(depending on your version number and username)
And delete (or rename) the folder ‘ENU’.
So I open that directory and there is the folder ENU.
Just in case I copy it to my desktop and rename the original one “old_ENU”.
I restart 3d max.
BOOM!
A new ENU folder is created and 3d Max is restored to factory settings.
And WOW, the keybinds work again.
But…. yeah… this is not what I want. I want to keep my previous layout with the dozens of scripts, custom layout and all other personal customizations.
So I dig into the ENU folder to see which file might be causing the issue and I find that after deleting the 3dmax.ini this file is the root of the problem.
So I copy the old “3dmax.ini” to the desktop and delete the one from the ENU folder. Then I restart max so that it automatically creates a new “3dmax.ini”.
This way I can now open them both next to each other and compare what is different between the two files.
Well, after a few years of using this max version and a lot of customizations, there are quite a few lines different.
After copy and pasting non-identical lines bit by bit from the old ini to the new ini I arrive at the following block
[ActionContext]
Context_34f274e4=1
Context_160d7c17=1
Context_2993eaf=1
Context_2993ebf=1
Context_71d4627a=1
Context_38ba1366=1
Context_5fbf49e6=1
Context_2880075b=1
Context_29760f19=1
Context_4a8e46da=1
Context_48547453=1
Context_6c242e47=1
Context_39af352e=1
Context_48ce6227=1
Context_56dc7bf8=1
Context_17d423db=1
Context_2994ebf=1
Context_223bc19=1
Context_5baf7000=1
Context_4ec1a89=1
Context_7bd55e43=1
Context_1e707dcf=1
Context_72769403=1
Context_72769404=1
Context_160c1870=1
Context_43315750=1
Context_0=1
Context_1=1
Context_2=1
Context_5=1
Context_6=1
Context_3=1
Context_abba2188=1
Context_34fe4c77=1
Context_34fe2c73=1
Context_7ed73ca2=1
Context_7ff73cb1=1
Context_258394d=1
Context_39f804f5=1
Context_39f804f7=1
Context_5ae40db2=1
Context_6bd55e20=1
Context_28b33b28=1
Context_16090901=1
Context_34b25954=1
Context_40a27298=1
sidenote: This list is from a 3d max ini I found online so the numbers might be slightly different but it looks almost identical to mine. I was stupid enough to delete the bad file before I wrote this article.
Back on topic. Removing the entire block SHOULD fix the keybind issue. However after deleting one line at a time I found out the error was in either
Context_0=1 or Context_0=0
Removing just these 2 lines will fix your keybinds issue WHILE keeping your entire 3d max customization intact.
I have NO idea what these lines do, but I removed the entire [ActionContext] list and max works fine again. If you know what it does, id appreciate it if you leave it in the comments.
Hope this solves your keybind issues as well.
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