Poliigon Plugin for 3ds Max Changelongs

Testing performed on all supported render engines except Octane, which does not yet support 3ds Max 2026

If you were already using the plugin in 3ds Max 2026, you might have noticed the toolbar disappearing after restarting - this issue is resolved in this update by marking 2026 as officially supported

Before this update with the latest version of Corona/Max, this could have resulted in textures appearing too bright

Browsing through categories as well as loading the initial home page should be substantially faster

Loading owned assets should also generally be much faster

You can now enable and control displacement from the asset adjustment panel - simply open the tweak panel from the Poliigon toolbar, select a model with a Poliigon material applied, and tick the box to enable displacement

Made the drag icon for assets be slightly transparent, to increase precision for where to drop the asset
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Added a banner warning users if an unsupported render is active

Support for multi viewports and asset drag and dropping, so you can correctly apply your materials and import your models with appropriate placements when the 3D view is split into multiple views

Improved render engine logging

Materials generated with transmission maps will no longer be use volume absorption by default

This is due to generally having minimal impact on renders under normal use for the volume textures Poliigon provides, while improving render times by removing it

For Render engines that support it, you can selectively re-enable volume absorption after importing using toggle node if present in the material shader, or by manually connecting the transmission image node to the material volume shader

You can also change the default behavior in Settings > Download & Import Preferences > Texture Preferences: Use Volume Transmission

Resolved shading issues with legacy assets, removing the reflection map connection which would cause the wrong glossiness to be applied

Furthermore, ensuring that the normal map is properly connected for specular workflow textures

Resolved an edge case when cancelling a login via web quickly

More reliable API decoding

Resolved parsing of model specifications for the large detail viewer

Fixed installing the plugin when the source mzp is on another disk drive

Resolved non-impacting UI error logs which could occur in 3ds Max 2025

Some users and team accounts may have faced difficulty logging into the plugin

Some users may have had trouble downloading assets due to a displayed “Purchase” message on the grid, even if on an unlimited plan.

Several website-only account management features are now available from the plugin, such as resuming or upgrading your plan

Ran out of downloads or getting low? Directly upgrade to the next available plan using your payment method on file. Users who upgrade in app are clearly shown the details of their current plan, the proposed new plan, and any immediate and future charges.

Cleanup of account data when logging out and back in - some edge cases remain so you may still benefit from restarting the software when changing users

Fixed a python conflict which could have interfered with running the plugin’s operators from a console

Improved fallback handling when encountering bad asset data structures

Improved handling of asset purchase errors

Opening links from the plugin will automatically log you into the website with the same account

Increased window size of the asset information view to eliminate the scrollbar

After importing a watermarked PBR preview, the asset adjustment panel will now display the current size as “watermarked 1K” instead of a blank size

Fixed issues with upgrading and reinstalling the plugin since the last version

Fixed issue loading old max files

Fixed an edge case of trying to purchase an asset without first opening the main browser window, such as if you navigated to the asset information viewer via the adjustment panel on a prior import

Fixed a number of other edge cases regarding how tweak panels refresh, including directly after performing a new size download

Improved fallback handling when encountering bad asset data structures

After importing an asset, you can now easily adjust its settings in a common way using this handy panel.

This includes changing resolution for all asset types, texture size/real world scale setting for materials, and rotation for HDRIs.

Works for all currently supported render engines. For more details of the functionality supported, see the documentation here.

Most notably, until now users may have had trouble using the Poliigon plugin at the same time as other internet-accessing plugins, including render farm managers. We have reworked the way module loading works to eliminate these conflicts.

If you run into any issues, or continue to see issues after this upgrade, please reach out to our support on the help docs site.

You can now more reliably drag and drop a material onto any object in the viewport with confidence

Materials are now applied only to the object you drag onto, regardless of selection; if you want to apply materials to multiple objects at once, select them all and then use the import button in the plugin instead of drag and drop

Dragging into empty space now places the object or preview plane into the middle of your screen at the floor level, instead of placement at the origin

Largely eliminated the risk of crashing after repeat FBX imports of models

Fixed the depth check for drag and drop of materials and assets, previously sometimes objects in the back were preferred

Releasing a drag provides more immediate feedback, while previously the icon would hang onto the cursor until the import action completed

These plans let you download an unlimited number of Textures, Models, and HDRIs from Poliigon with no credits or download limits, learn more here

If you cancel your unlimited plan, the plugin will no longer allow you to re-import premium assets; this does not impact assets downloaded using packs or a plan with a monthly asset balance

Known issue: Assets downloaded via an unlimited plan are not currently visible in the Imported tab, an update coming soon will resolve this

You are now able to right-click any asset to open a large detail viewer

This viewer lets you scroll through all of the same preview images on the website, except for video previews

This popup also includes details such as the physical size of the asset, and other meta data where relevant such as polycount and maps included

This also allows for a quick way to download other resolutions, open the website, or open the folder(s) an asset is contained inside of (if local)

Users will see one-time popups when purchasing their first asset, to raise awareness of available user settings

Users will see a one-time popup the first time they perform a pbr watermark preview (by dragging a non-acquired asset into the scene), to clarify what this means

Added a new setting called Show Purchase Confirmation, which if enabled gives the user an extra chance to confirm a purchase before the asset balance is used

Reworked the account tab to be simpler

Cancelled downloads no longer hang, which could happen if cancellation was pressed quickly before the download was started

Safer and more reliable plugin shutdown handling

We recommend 2021 and 2022 users first delete their existing plugin before installing the new version, to ensure all dependencies are corrected. You can remove the existing install at: C:\\ProgramData\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\poliigon-addon-3dsmax

This upgrade is not necessary for 2023+ users

Map selection preferences

Conditional material imports: when importing a material, the plugin will check if a material with that same combination of resolution and extension/enabled map choices are already in the file, otherwise it will do a fresh import

Green checkmarks for owned assets now reliably load on the Online tab

Updated the url for the website pricing page

Improved handling of partial failures during file downloads

Users are now forced to restart 3ds max after installing an update, and improved recognition of new plugin installs - this is to ensure the plugin is fully loaded with the most up to date modules

Top-right notices are now properly dismissed after pressing the x-icon

You can now add additional folders or drives in Settings, any Poliigon assets found there will be available for importing

Downloads will continue to go into the 'Primary' folder.

Fix loading displacement files in the .tiff format

The My Assets category tree is now sparsely populated, only showing categories where you own at least 1 asset

Resolved issue of plugin now working after closing and reopening the window, it will now return to working such that your scroll and category position is retained

Fixing a few scenarios of redrawing causing when quickly changing tabs

Improved the stability of FBX imports by closing and then re-showing the plugin after an FBX import as completed, given the built-in import causes quite a bit of flickering for each import performed

For limitations across render engines, the new plugin always will push users to use the 'METALNESS' workflow files over the 'SPECULAR' workflow files where there is an option at download. If you have legacy 'SPECULAR' files on your harddrive, you will continue to not be able to use these files - but we are better handling it so it's easy to download the metalness variants for higher quality rendering.

You may need to perform a manual install in order to get the working plugin - moving forward, a more stable forward-compatible installation is being used.

Indicate assets purchased but not-yet local with a gray checkmark, so that local assets with a green checkmark are easier to identify

Added signal to remotely inform how an initiated download completed, so we may better monitor and improve asset download reliability

Minor UI improvements during library setup

Improvement on Arnold bitmaps to avoid opening the same map twice, slowing down material creation

Support for 3ds Max 2025, including fixes to the qt6 library and HDRI importing

Implemented workaround to convert thumbnail hdri jpg to png, due to missing qt dll in released 3ds Max 2025 version

Resolved permission error that could occur during thumbnail downloads

Resolved a NotImplementedError would could occur during browsing

Improved the fallback for reading the currency code displayed on the account page for paid plans

Better fallback handling if an icon is not readable

Implemented functional SSS, Fabric (fuzz sheen), and Translucency workflows for all render engines, utilized automatically for models and materials containing the maps

Auto expand a category on selection for faster browsing between categories

More stable handling of missing thumbnails on server. Previously, a missing thumbnail could have rendered the UI non functional, now it will gracefully move past the asset with any problems, and better yet, fall back to downloading the next best thumbnail.

Improved handling of asset metadata convention

Added both Octane and Redshift render engine, supporting all assets available in the plugin (Models, Materials, and HDRIs)

Asset names are now visible in the grid view

During your first material import, a one-time popup will ask you to confirm your real world scale settings, addressing feedback of different users wanting the default on vs off. This can be changed in the Settings: Download & Import preferences > Textures > Real World Scale tickbox

The thumbnail size slider is now synced between views and saved to settings whenever adjusted

Added a mechanism to alert users about specific assets with newer conventions not supported by their current plugin install. No current assets are affected, but this will help direct users to update the plugin when new asset conventions are rolled out for users that have delayed updating.

Enabling 16bit images and turning off emission for cardboard (backdrop) assets. In the future, we will have per maptype options for which bit depth to use

Fixed error handling in the grid view which caused 3ds max to crash. This is likely the most prominent causes of instability users have faced

Implemented numerous minor fixes to materials generated. Known workflows still missing: SSS, translucency, and fabric (fuzz), coming in the next update.

Better handling of unsupported render engines, including a notice that Corona 7+ is required

Fixed some maps sometimes not loading into assets due to alphamasked assets, such as with GrillTeslaWavyCrissCross001

Clicking asset balance opens account page in the plugin instead of the website page

Implemented faster method from new endpoint for downloading thumbnails during browsing

Improved logging mechanism, including logging background threads and saving logs to a file for more reliable troubleshooting

Fixed most commonly faced bug during material creation, which could result in the console error: 'pymxs.MXSWrapperBase' object has no attribute 'name'

Support for the new asset balance redesign, read more here

Added notification popup after purchasing if out of credits, with prompt for taking further action

Fixed the grid widget editor not opening after scrolling or purchasing, which would have required users to move their mouse off and back onto the grid item to perform imports

Textures now import with real world scale applied

Added FBX Models importing support, in addition to 3ds Max files. See options in user preferences

New preference option to add a synced node scales, default off. Previously, this was always on. It may have appeared that UVs or scale could not be changed in textures, due to this hidden control node used to sync sizes across textures. There are now two to correctly adjust for some non-square textures.

Added a general purpose alert banner system, so we can notify users of critical outages or about unsupported versions of the plugin in the future

Added feedback survey mechanism with above banner, suggesting users give feedback only once after a week of using the plugin

Textures now import using Bitmap Textures in Arnold

Retain window size, position, and state after re-opening

Several data and processing improvements, the plugin should be appear much more stable

Fixed quickly changing tabs potentially resulting in a hanging loading state

Fixed runtime errors relating to closing and re-opening the main plugin UI

Fixed over-reporting of non-issue API responses

Fixed issue where my assets would always fully refresh when opening the page, if there was one purchase sometime during this session

Improved reliability of API download handling, which should reduce glitches including on download

Added user preferences for texture and HDRI download + import resolution

Implemented a one-click auto update button. Moving forward, the plugin will directly notify you at the top right when a new update is ready to be installed.

Improved re-install experience, including a popup directing new users to dock the new plugin

Lower corona normal map blur filtering for higher quality results with minimal render time impact

Fixed a bug during preview file downloads: UnboundLocalError local variable.

Fixed drawing errors in 3ds max 2021 when hovering over a grid asset item

Fixed a bug resulting in failed downloads if asset already had local, completed files

New popup during (re)-install to prompt users to dock or which new version was just installed

Reinstalling the plugin won't result in duplicate popups now

Plugin version information now available in the main settings tab

Resolved an issue where the drag resolution for a texture would not match the dropdown specified resolution, which could lead to an error during material creation.

Resolved an issue which would lead to errors if the same asset was found in multiple folders