A 3ds Max clone built on Blender launches about four times faster

British artist Jake Denham, who has worked in 3ds Max for many years, has published a video showing a Max workflow recreated on top of Blender. According to him, he used vibe coding — writing code with the help of AI from task descriptions in plain text.

The build supports the familiar Max hotkeys, the quad menu and the modifier stack. It opens .max files and, according to the author, launches roughly four times faster than the original.

What exactly the author reproduced

Denham lists the set of features he ported to Blender:

• 3ds Max hotkeys;
• the quad menu;
• the modifier stack;
• opening files in the .max format;
• launching roughly four times faster than Max;
• some capabilities that Max does not have — while keeping access to Blender's standard tools.

The practical point here lies in the last item. Moving from Max to Blender usually runs up against not only functionality but also muscle memory: hotkeys drilled in over years, a different selection logic, the absence of a modifier stack in its familiar form. Denham's build addresses precisely this barrier — interface habits are preserved, while under the hood there is an open package with its own add-on ecosystem.

You can't use it yet

Denham makes a caveat: this is a personal project, and it will not go on sale. The community's reaction, meanwhile, has been notable — many Max users responded to the project with enthusiasm.

Why builds like this are appearing right now

Not long ago, rewriting the interface and logic of an entire DCC package on top of another one required a team of developers and months of work. Generative models have made writing utility code considerably cheaper, and the threshold for solo projects of this scale has dropped: what used to be considered the work of a tools department turns out to be within reach of an individual artist. Against this backdrop, other similar experiments are likely — ports of familiar layouts, menus and modifiers from one package into another.

The .max format is a separate matter. It is proprietary, and any third-party implementation of reading it creates legal risks that limit the public distribution of such tools more than technical difficulties do. This is probably also connected to the fact that the project remains a personal one.

If the trend continues, the main beneficiaries will be studios that have long been eyeing Blender but fear losing team speed to retraining. The vendor of the commercial package ends up in the less advantageous position: when habit no longer keeps a user tied to a licence, there are fewer arguments to stay. Judging by the reaction to the video, demand for a familiar Max on a faster and cheaper foundation persists — and artists themselves are starting to meet it.