Setting up a Reference Image.

In this tutorial we will be setting up a reference image in the viewport to aid our modeling. This is a simple and common process but can be very confusing for beginners. The first thing we need to do is create a plane in the viewport. Set your Length Segments and Width Segements to 1.

Once you have your plane it's time to bring your texture into max. First open your material editor shown in the image below, then find the image you are using in Explorer and drag the file onto one of the empty spheres.

Now that your image in inside Max, you need to apply it to the plane. Drag it from the sphere to the plane the same as you did bringing it in, or select your plane and hit the Apply Material to Selection button. If your plane turns grey but the image doesn't show up, click the Show Map in Viewport button.

Now you have your texture on the plane, but you may have noticed that it appears squished or skewed. Chances are you didn't make your plane to the exact aspect ratio of your image. A quick way to fix this is to go into the Modify Tab and add a UVW Map modifier to your plane. Inside the UVW Map modifier, click the Bitmap Fit button. This will open a window which allows you to navigate Explorer and locate the image you imported earlier. Doing this will force your image's aspect to be perfectly recreated on your plane.

You will probably run into an issue here where your plane is either too big or too small so that your texture tiles or is cut off. Notice above how my texture is tiled, this can be distracting while you are trying to model. The process to fix this has two steps. Start by moving the Gizmo on the modifier to center the image on your plane. Then change the Length and Width of your plane to crop the picture. See the image below for explanation.