I really liked the new transform gizmos. The Move and Position gizmos now include plane handles which allow you to manipulate the selected object in XY,YZ,or XZ planes. Each gizmo can be customized to your viewing pleasure allowing you to control it's releative sizes, and offsets.

Bone Tools
Bone tools, available from the new Character menu, provide a single, modeless dialog for doing the adjustments that fit a skeleton. Three rollouts provide the control as follows:

• Bone Editing Tools Rollout: Controls on the Bone Editing Tools rollout are for creating and changing bone geometry, and setting bone color for one or more bones.
• Fin Adjustment Tools Rollout: Controls on the Fin Adjustment Tools rollout are for adjusting some aspects of bone geometry, including fins.
• Object Properties Rollout (Bone Tools): Controls on the Object Properties rollout for bones let you turn other objects into bones. They also control bone rigidity and alignment.

Enhancements to Editable Polygon Surfaces
The editable polygon user interface has been redesigned, and features have been added or improved. The major enhancements are Settings dialogs for Extrude, Bevel, Outline, Inset, and other tools; a new Quickslice tool; extrusion along a spline; Hinge From Edge; constraints; and the ability to grow or shrink a selection.

Soft Selection Enhancements
Soft selection colors now display at all sub-object levels, not just the Vertex level. The Soft Selection controls make a sub-object selection behave as if surrounded by a "magnetic field." Unselected sub-objects within the field are drawn along smoothly while you transform the sub-object selection, the effect diminishing with distance. This falloff is visible in the viewports as a color gradient surrounding the selection.

Modifier Enhancements
Skin Modifier: The Skin modifier has improved in speed and usability. A new spreadsheet-like Weight Table lets you view and manage the influence of vertices.

Unwrap UVW Modifier: Unwrap UVW has been enhanced in a variety of ways to improve usability.

HSDS Modifier The HSDS modifier user interface has been improved. Some controls have been moved, and a new subdivision stack display gives you a better view of the subdivision hierarchy.

Morpher Modifier The Morpher modifier now supports “progressive morphing,” which lets you specify intermediate shapes that give you more control over how the morph interpolation proceeds.

New Modifiers
Symmetry Modifier:The Symmetry modifier is for creating a symmetrical model such as a human head. You can edit the original object half, and interactively view the results on its mirrored counterpart.

Vertex Weld Modifier: The Vertex Weld modifier is for cleaning up objects that have close or coincident vertices that aren't welded.

Edit Normals Modifier:The Edit Normals modifier lets you edit the default normals of an editable surface, changing the surface's appearance in game engines. (Edit Normals does not affect how an object renders in 3ds max, but you can use Direct3D viewports to preview the effect.)

Layers
Layers are like transparent overlays on which you organize and group different kinds of scene information. The objects you create have common properties including color, visibility, renderability, and display. An object can assume these properties from the layer on which you create it. Using layers makes it easier to manage the information in your scenes.

Ink and Paint
The Ink 'n Paint material creates cartoon effects. Rather than the three-dimensional, realistic effect most other materials provide, Ink 'n Paint provides flat shading with “inked” borders.

Because Ink 'n Paint is a material, you can create a scene that combines 3D-shaded objects with flat-shaded cartoon objects.

Translucent shader
The Translucent shader gives you the effect of light passing through an object: light that hits one side of an object is also visible on the other side. Translucent shading is good for objects like curtains, projection screens, and etched glass. Translucent shading is similar to Blinn shading, but it also lets you specify translucency. A translucent object allows light to pass through, and also scatters light within the object. You can use translucency to simulate frosted and etched glass.

Advanced Lighting Override Material
This material lets you directly control the radiosity properties of a material. Advanced Lighting Override is always a supplement to a base material, which can be any renderable material. The Advanced Lighting Override material has no effect on ordinary renderings. It affects the radiosity solution or light tracing.

Set Key Mode
The Set Key animation system is designed for the professional character animator who wants be able to try out poses and then commit those poses to keyframes intentionally. It is a way of working that allows more control than the Auto Key method, since it gives you the chance to try out ideas and discard them quickly without having to undo work. It lets you pose your character, and selectively key certain tracks on certain objects through the use of Key Filters and Keyable icons in Track View.

Track View Changes
The Track View interface has been significantly improved. It now provides two separate, specialized editors:

The Curve Editor is for function curve editing. Curve Editor is a Track View mode that allows you to work with motion expressed as function curves on a graph. You can easily see and control the motion and animation of the objects in the scene using tangent handles on the keys found on the curves.You can even draw curves directly on the graph.

The Dope Sheet is for track editing and key management. The 3ds max Dope Sheet editor is similar to the classic X sheet. It displays keyframes over time, only using a horizontal graph (rather than vertical). This provide tools for adjusting the timing of your animation.

Spline IK
Spline IK is an IK solver that uses a spline as the basis for the shape of the IK chain. Spline IK is suitable for modeling things like tails, snakes, tentacles, and ropes.

Spline IK on a multi-segment tail

Boolean Controller
The Boolean Controller is an on/off type of controller. Unlike the On/Off controller from previous releases, it does not alternate the on/off state at each key. Instead, each key has its own state definition: sequential keys with the same state do not affect the on/off state. Only when a key with a different state is reached, does the object state change.

Boolean Controller key display in Track View's Dope Sheet

Gimbal Rotation
Gimbal rotation is a new reference coordinate system for rotating objects interactively with the Euler XYZ controller. It gives you a one-to-one correspondence between axis orientation and the Euler XYZ tracks.

Auto Tangent Interpolation
The new Auto Tangent interpolation type guarantees a smooth transition between keys. It avoids the overshooting that is often seen with Smooth interpolation.

Photometric lights
These types of lights Acurately model the intensity, color, and distribution of lights in the real world. Because photometric lights use real-world intensity values, they rely on accurate scaling in your scene. Use photometric lights with radiosity to obtain physically accurate lighting in your renderings.

Daylight Lights Several new options help you light an outdoor scene:

• Skylight is a texturable dome light that is not photometric.
• IES Sky is similar to Skylight, but is photometric.
• IES Sun is a photometric sun source.

Rendering to textures can save rendering time: in an animation, the lighting of static objects baked textures doesn't need to be recalculated. More importantly, rendered textures can be exported to other environments such as game engines.

Exposure Controls
Exposure Controls are plug-in components that adjust the output levels and color range of a rendering, as if you were adjusting film exposure. Exposure Controls are especially useful for renderings that use radiosity.