Create Holes User Guide

Overview

Create Holes is a 3ds Max modifier designed to streamline hole creation directly from selected vertices or polygons. It provides precise control over hole shapes, geometry optimization, and advanced features such as outer loops, extrusion, caps, and subdivision. A built-in presets manager allows you to save and reuse custom configurations for faster and more consistent modeling workflows.

Requirements & Installation

Requirements

3ds Max 2016 - 2027

Installation

1. Unzip the archive CreateHoles.zip.
2. Copy CreateHoles.mse to the 3ds Max 20xx\stdplugs\stdscripts folder.
3. The modifier will appear in the modifier list.

Quick Start

1. Select a mesh object, go to vertex or polygon sub-object level, and select the vertices or polygons where holes should be created.
2. Apply the Create Holes modifier from the Modifier List.
3. If working with polygons, enable Use Selected Faces in the Main rollout.
4. Set the desired Radius and enable Additional Edges if the mesh is too coarse to form a clean hole shape.
5. Optionally, adjust the hole shape, enable Outer Loop, Extrude And Bevel, Cap, Subdivision, or save the configuration as a preset.

Vertices on open borders and vertices with too few surrounding edges are automatically excluded from hole generation.

Interface Overview

Shape

Defines the shape profile of each hole.

Type

• Circle: Vertices of the hole are distributed evenly in a circular pattern. The number of vertices is determined by the mesh topology around each source vertex.
• NGon: Vertices are distributed to approximate a regular polygon. The number of polygon sides is set independently from mesh topology.

NGon Parameters

Available when NGon type is selected.

Sides
Number of sides of the target polygon shape. Higher values approximate a circle more closely.

C. Radius
Corner radius applied to the NGon corners, rounding them off. Set to 0 for sharp corners.

Distortion
Shifts hole vertices along the NGon perimeter: positive values cluster them toward corners, negative toward edge midpoints, zero distributes them evenly.

Angle
Rotates the NGon shape around the hole normal axis. Also applies to Circle type, rotating the entire hole vertex ring.

Optimize

Enable
When enabled, collinear or near-collinear vertices along the hole edge are merged, reducing unnecessary geometry. Useful when a hole has more edge vertices than the NGon sides require.

Threshold
The angle tolerance in degrees used to determine whether a vertex is collinear enough to be removed. Lower values are stricter; higher values remove more aggressively.

Main

Controls the core behavior of hole placement and geometry generation.

Use Selected Faces
When enabled, the modifier operates on selected polygons rather than vertices. Each selected polygon is collapsed to its center point, which becomes the hole origin. Polygons on open borders are automatically excluded.

Radius
The size of the generated hole in scene units. Applies to both Circle and NGon shapes — for NGon, this is the circumradius (distance from center to corner).

Additional Edges
Adds extra edge loops around each source vertex before hole generation. This increases the vertex count available to form the hole ring, which can improve shape quality on coarse meshes.

Average Normal
When enabled, the hole normal is calculated as the average of all surrounding face normals, producing smoother results on curved surfaces. When disabled, the per-vertex normal is used. Note: this option is overridden and always treated as enabled when Subdivision is active.

Smooth
Applies auto-smoothing (180° threshold) to the faces surrounding each hole, unifying their smoothing groups for a cleaner shaded appearance.

Deform
Stretches or squashes the hole shape along the direction toward the nearest outer vertex. A value of 1.0 produces a uniform shape. Values below 1.0 compress the hole toward the center, values above 1.0 elongate it.

Angle
Rotates the hole vertex ring around its normal axis. Works for both Circle and NGon shapes.

Offset
Moves the entire hole along its local normal direction, displacing it into or out of the surface.

Outer Loop

Adds an additional edge loop around the outside of each hole, useful for controlling shading and preparing geometry for subdivision surface workflows.

Enable
Activates the Outer Loop feature. All parameters below require this to be checked.

Amount
The distance from the hole edge to the outer loop. Positive values push the loop outward; the loop position is calculated per-vertex based on the direction toward the adjacent outer geometry.

Segments
The number of intermediate edge loops inserted between the hole edge and the outer loop position. Higher values create a smoother transition band.

Outline
Changes the method used to place the outer loop. When enabled, the loop is created using a standard bevel/outline operation rather than the directional per-vertex approach. This produces a more uniform offset on flat surfaces.

Extrude And Bevel

Extrudes the hole inward (or outward) and optionally applies a bevel at the transition, creating a chamfered or tunneled edge profile.

Enable
Activates the Extrude And Bevel feature.

Extrude
The depth of the extrusion along the hole normal. Negative values extrude inward into the mesh; positive values extrude outward.

Bevel
An additional inset or outset applied at the top of the extrusion, creating a slanted transition between the surface and the extruded wall.

Segments
Number of edge loops along the extruded wall. Increasing segments improves the smoothness of curved extrusions when used with Subdivision.

Pinch
Redistributes the segment loops along the extrusion length. Positive values cluster loops toward the top; negative values cluster them toward the bottom.

Smooth
Applies smoothing across the extruded faces, unifying them into a single smoothing group for a continuous shaded surface.

Cap

Fills each hole with a polygon cap instead of leaving it open. Provides options to inset the cap, triangulate it, or reduce its edge count.

Enable
Activates the Cap feature. When disabled, the modifier deletes the original faces at the hole location, leaving an open hole. When enabled, those faces are replaced with a new capped polygon.

Inset
Adds an inset ring inside the cap polygon before the main cap face is created.

Amount
The inset distance from the hole edge to the inner cap polygon boundary.

Segments
Number of concentric inset rings added inside the cap.

Triangulate Cap
Subdivides the cap polygon into triangles by connecting all vertices to the cap center. Useful for non-planar caps where a flat polygon would cause shading artifacts.

Remove Every Nth Edge
Selectively removes internal edges from the cap polygon to reduce edge density. Operates on the cap after inset and triangulation.

Step
Determines which edges are kept and which are removed — every Nth edge is deleted. A value of 2 removes every other edge.

Offset
Shifts the starting point of the removal pattern, allowing you to control which specific edges are targeted.

Invert
Reverses the removal pattern, deleting the edges that would otherwise be kept.

Subdivision

Subdivides the ring of faces surrounding each hole before shape placement, increasing the vertex count available for the hole profile and enabling finer, smoother hole shapes on coarser meshes.

Enable
Activates subdivision. When enabled, Average Normal is always used regardless of its checkbox state.

Iterations
The number of subdivision passes applied to the surrounding face ring. Each iteration multiplies the available vertex count, allowing progressively rounder holes.

Connect
When enabled, newly created subdivision vertices are connected to the outer ring of surrounding geometry, fully integrating the subdivision into the mesh topology. Disabling this leaves the new vertices unconnected, which can be useful in specific cases where you want to control connectivity manually.

Presets

Saves and loads full modifier configurations as named preset files, stored in the 3ds Max plugin configuration folder.

Name
Type a name for the new preset here before clicking Add, or select an existing preset from the list to populate this field for renaming reference.

Add
Saves all current modifier settings as a new preset under the entered name. Right-clicking the Add button opens the presets folder in Windows Explorer for manual file management.

Delete
Removes the currently selected preset from the list and deletes its file.

Preset list
Displays all saved presets. Click to select; double-click to apply immediately to the current modifier.

Apply
Applies the selected preset to the modifier, loading all saved parameter values.