Is it possible to make Maya’s joint display like 3dsMAX and shaded display?
Do I need to create a joint to draw a custom locator?
You would most likely need to create some kind of custom object and handle the drawing yourself.
Is there a sample for creating custom objects?
You can find some examples for C++ and Python in Maya’s Devkit which you can download here: https://www.autodesk.com/developer-network/platform-technologies/maya
While I don’t think there are any example of bones, there are examples of drawing custom locators in Viewport 2.0 and legacy too. I suppose the idea is gonna be the same.
That said, if you’re coming from max to maya and want to make it look like in max - I also had same thoughts, but later realized that there’s no need or point in it in maya. With Maya’s workflows there’s really not much benefit in seeing joints as anything else than hierarchy representation. You can toggle axes display which is more useful than 3d shape. Unless your custom 3d shape shows axis somehow, with color or whatever
you can change the draw style of joints to display as the bone structure you see now, if you have multiple children you can display it as a box which uses the orientation of the joint. or you can set it to none to not draw the bone and visualization between children.
there used to be a lot more options on draw styles back in Maya 2012, but they where removed since 2013
other ways to change visualization are to parent shapes to the joint objects and these will have the same property as the joint (although you might want to turn of the render display option)
or you can create your own joint node in C++ and subclass the joint component, but then you have to add your own drawing method to it