I continue to share the library of scripts that I have been collecting over fifteen years of working in the industry.

Name: sceneCleaner

Briefly: sceneCleaner tidies up the scene in 3ds Max: it cleans the Environment Map, removes unused materials, clears the Slate Material Editor, and trims absolute paths to bitmaps to file names. The tool is useful before handing over the scene, archiving, or debugging a cluttered material library.

Installation:
1. Drag the .ms file into the viewport or select Scripting > Run Script — the dialog will open immediately.
2. Copy the file to the scripts/startup folder so that the script loads automatically each time 3ds Max starts.
3. To assign individual operations to buttons on the panel or hotkeys, open Customize > Customize User Interface, find the MyTools category, and assign the necessary macros: Clear Environment, Purge Unused Materials, Clear Materials from Selected Objects, Strip Bitmap Paths.

Functionality:
The dialog opens automatically at startup and contains the SCT_CleanupRollout rollout with a set of checkboxes and an Apply button. All selected operations are performed in a single Undo block "Scene Cleanup"; undo and redo work through Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y even for changes in the Material Editor.

Checkboxes (enabled by default unless otherwise specified):

Environment — enabled by default. Cleans the scene's environmentMap. If the active renderer is Corona, it additionally resets the related properties bg_texmap, bg_override, and bg_source.

Purge Materials — enabled by default. Gathers unused materials from sceneMaterials and meditMaterials, checks real dependencies through refs.dependentNodes, distinguishing the utility references of the Material Editor from actual usage, and removes only truly orphaned materials from the Compact and Slate editors.

Clear Selected Objects — disabled by default. Removes materials from selected objects. Materials that are still used by other objects in the scene are retained; only truly orphaned materials are removed.

Slate Editor — enabled by default. Clears all tabs in the Slate Material Editor through SelectAll + DeleteSelection, ideally without opening the editor window; if this fails, it opens Slate once, performs the cleanup, and restores the original window state.

Bitmap Paths — enabled by default. Finds all texture maps of the Bitmap, HDRI, and Image classes, trimming the values of the properties filename and HDRIMapName to the simple file name through filenameFromPath.

After pressing Apply, each operation returns a report with status (#success / #partial / #failed), a counter of processed objects, and a list of errors. The summary is outputted in the MAXScript Listener and in the final messageBox.

Compatibility: 3ds Max 2016 and higher.