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From Developing 3ds Max scripts to Blender addons

My First Steps into Blender: Why I Decided to Start Developing Addons

For more than a decade I’ve been fully immersed in the 3ds Max world—using it every single day for production, and building plugins and scripts under the Spline Dynamics brand to make workflows faster, smarter, and a lot less painful. 3ds Max has been my home, and honestly, I still love it. But over the past few years, it’s been frustrating to see Autodesk holding back on 3ds Max development, while Blender keeps expanding impressively across every corner of 3D production.

Like many of you, I was skeptical at first. Blender looked interesting, sure—but could it really compete with 3ds Max in professional pipelines? I’ve always believed that software is just a tool, and what really matters is what you create with it. Still, Blender kept popping up everywhere: in ArchViz, motion graphics, VFX, game development, even among freelancers and small studios that traditionally relied on Max. Why? It’s free, open source, growing super fast, and the community is insanely active.

So at some point, curiosity won. I started learning Blender on the side, playing with Geometry Nodes, digging into the Python API, and comparing it to my experience developing for Max. And here’s my honest take so far:

What I really like about Blender:

  • It’s free and open source, which lowers the entry barrier for tons of artists, and allows for continuous updates and revisions.
  • The software is really lightweight and opens in a few seconds.
  • Geometry Nodes are just brilliant. They open up procedural workflows that in Max would require either plugins or a lot of custom scripting.
  • The community is massive, helpful, and super engaged. There’s a constant flow of tutorials, addons, and experiments.
  • Development is active and transparent—you can see the roadmap, the commits, and even influence the direction.

What I still miss from 3ds Max:

  • Some workflows still feel more polished and robust in Max (especially when it comes to precision modeling and certain CAD-related tasks).
  • The modifier stack in Max is simple but extremely powerful—sometimes Blender’s approach feels a bit messy.
  • As a developer, the MaxScript environment (combined with the SDK) is very mature, while Blender’s Python API is powerful but still has quirks you need to work around.
  • Let’s be honest: switching after years in Max is not painless. Muscle memory is a thing!

After a while, I realized something important: I don’t need to choose. I can keep developing and supporting plugins for 3ds Max while also exploring Blender. Both have strengths, and many professionals (maybe you too) actually use them side by side depending on the project.

Which brings me to some exciting news: I’ve just released my very first Blender addon!

ECM, a simple and powerful Blender modifier

ECM – Extrude Curve Modifier is a non-destructive modifier built with Geometry Nodes that lets you extrude curves quickly and parametrically. If you’ve ever tried to create 3D geometry from curves in Blender, you know it’s possible but not always straightforward. ECM makes it simple, intuitive, and flexible—something I always aim for in my tools.

This is just the beginning. My plan is to keep developing addons for Blender while continuing my work in 3ds Max. I see this not as “switching sides” but as expanding the toolkit—for myself and for you, the artists who follow Spline Dynamics.

So if you’re a Blender user (or curious about becoming one), feel free to check out ECM, it’s already available on Blender Extensions and on Gumroad. I’d love to hear your feedback, suggestions, or ideas for future tools.

This is a new adventure for me, and I’m honestly excited to see where it leads.

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TurboSplines Tutorial: Creating Helix Coils

This external tutorial posted by Elara Systems encompasses thorough instructions for creating Helix Coils using the TurboSplines and Path Deform plugins.

It goes over strategy for pipeline planning when using a complicated modifier stack when combining multiple external plugins. It’s a tutorial for a more advanced 3DS Max users and also requires you to have the plugins listed above.

Click on the image below to watch it on Youtube:

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TurboSplines Introductory Video Tutorial

This is an external video tutorial. A great introduction to TurboSplines, created by Jamie Cardoso (renowned author, reviewer, computer artist & technologist)

It’s a quick overview of the main tools and parameters in the plugin, that shows you how fast and easy is to create amazing spline animations and effects with TurboSplines.

 
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TurboSplines Tutorial: Making Light Trails

“Mystical Explosion”. Art by Rodolfo Rodríguez, CG Artist & Animator.

Hi guys!

In this tutorial we will see how to recreate this cool VFX work, called “Mystical Explosion”, using TurboSplines 3dsMax plugin.

Although this kind of special FX (light trails and light rays) are usually made with 3D particles, VXF plugins or directly in postproduction, the power and versatility of TurboSplines allows you to easily create them as 3D meshes, so you can have a fast realtime representation of the whole thing and control every aspect of the final shape. Let’s start.

First, we need to create the nucleus. It’s like a magical gem about to explode.

Create a geosphere. Then add an EditPoly modifier and extrude all its faces a bit outwards to make it look like it’s cracking because of the internal pressure.

To make the paths for the light trails, you can use circular shapes and place them like orbits around the nucleus. Another way is to make a torus knot object (Control Panel > Extended Primitives) and extract one of its edge loops to use just a single spline as the path. But the better and easier way to get a cool path for this, is using Spiros plugin. It’s as simple as creating any primitive shape in 3dsmax. The one in this tutorial was made with that plugin. Look at the image below.

Now open TurboSplines. At the Creation section, load the path/s and create 5 or 6 cylinders along the path/s to make the light trails. Use the extra feature Taper to make the trails look more dynamic and appealing.

To make the bigger end of the cylinders look smoother, change the basic geometry of the meshes from cylinder to capsule (with rounded end). Go to Creation > Mesh Type and select Capsule. Then press ‘(Re)Buil Geometry’.

Adjust the meshes’ radius, segments and height at the Edition section.

Once you are happy with shape of the light trails, hide them to start making the radial light rays coming out of the nucleus.

For this example, instead of using a post-render effect, we will build the light rays as 3D geometry (for the same reason we did that with the light trails).

Although there are other methods to create objects like spikes on the surface of another object, we recommend you to try this great free plugin called Vertices to Splines.

Download the script and do the following.

Make a copy of the geosphere, scale it down a bit and delete the EditPoly modifier. This way you can use its vertices as starting points for the radial light rays.

Using the script and the second geosphere, generate the radial splines with some length variation to make like the bright of a star. See the image below.

Then use TurboSplines again (cylinders with taper) to quickly create like spikes, emerging from the geosphere. Delete this second sphere.

Unhide the light trails meshes and check the general shape and volume of the final model. Make the necessary adjustments.

Create a camera and set a nice view for the final composition.

Assign some nice materials for the light trails, the nucleus and the radial light rays.

Render the image, with all the channels you need to have enough freedom for compositing (diffuse, reflection, z-depth, transparency, etc.)

Finally, in your favorite image-editing or post-production software, retouch the image/s, add glows, smoke, bright and additional effects to your final render.

That’s all! I hope you liked this tutorial. If you have any doubts or consultations, please post them down here on the comments section or write us through this Contact form.

Cheers! 🙂

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TurboSplines Tutorial: Creation, Editing & Animation

Here are 3 videos that will show you the basic procedures for creating, editing and animating your path deformed meshes with TurboSplines 3dsmax plugin.

This video will show you how to use the tools in the Creation section to quickly make path deformed meshes.

  • Load your paths
  • Use different mesh types (cylinder, box, capsule, ribbon, custom profile, custom mesh)
  • Create multiple meshes per path
  • Add extra features to your meshes: Taper, Tip, Slice start/end

This video shows how to use the tools in the Editing section.

  • Change basic parameters (radius, sides, segments, height)
  • Edit and animate Path Deform properties
  • Copy/Paste parameters between meshes
  • Apply variation to get a more appealing look.

This video shows how to use the tools in the Animation section.

  • Set Animation type: move, grow, reveal
  • Configure Animation start and length
  • Apply Offset and set animations order
  • Adjust Path Percent values
  • Set an Easing

For further information about TurboSplines, please check out the other tutorials or go to the TurboSplines Manual.

 
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