3ds Max - Troubleshooting & General Discussion

[KevinPaul06 57]

Can someone help to figure out what causing that shadow and how to fix it? Thanks!

 

[Jasoncw 12,028]

Looks like incorrect smoothing groups to me.

 

When you have, for example, a cylinder or a sphere for example, and it has a limited number of polygons, the reason it doesn't appear faceted is because of smoothing groups.  If two polygons are part of the same smoothing group they will blend together as if that part of the surface was round rather than faceted.

 

And for your problem what happens is sometimes smoothing groups are automatically assigned between surfaces and then when you do some poly modeling the smoothing groups gets carried on from earlier in the modeling, but the smoothing groups are trying to blend things which physically don't make sense to blend.

 

The solution is to select everything and clear all the smoothing groups for objects which have entirely hard edges.  And for BATing, because the renders are so small, for the occasional round object you can use enough polygons that you can even turn smoothing groups off for curved sections.

[KevinPaul06 57]

Do you mind if I ask how? 

[Jasoncw 12,028]

If you google it you should be able to find screenshots of where it is on the interface and stuff. 

[KevinPaul06 57]

I did. But the shadow is still there. Converting the object to editable poly somehow remove the shadow. But if you render it, the shadow will still appear.

[Jasoncw 12,028]

You need to both convert it into an editable poly, and then remove all of the smoothing groups.

[Dibabasu 4]

from where i can download the 3ds max?

[Jasoncw 12,028]

autodesk.com 

 

If you're a student you can get it for free.

[balkair 6]

Hey guys, I recently re-installed Bat4Max this time on the 2013 version of 3ds Max. Whenever I try to make a render (day/night), it seems as if the "red" is turned off in the rgb settings even though it is not. Everything is rendered overly cyan, as you can see, and when I click on the "red" button to switch it off it makes no difference. It is as if it red is already switched off. Any ideas on what the problem is and how to fix it? :S

 

 

 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Cool looking flag, I'm sure I can't help you on this. Have you tried resting the cameras, or merge the files in a new seen without the cameras.

[balkair 6]

If I delete the rig lights, the cyan "layer" goes away but whenever I click on the three options for "set rig for" (day/dark nite/maxis nite) it automatically re-appears. There must be something wrong with the light settings I guess. Any idea how to fix that? 

 

with Day light rigs:

 

and without:

 

As you can see, the model changes colour as well - it is not just the render.

[Ro-Bo 183]

Greetings. I have a problem. Objects becomes invisible in perspective viewport whenever I apply textures on them. The texture itself is not invisible, it's at 100%. These objects however appear in BAT preview render window. How can I fix this?

 

SOLVED : Disabling hardware shading solved the problem.

[IL. 1,043]

Hello
I'm making a BAT that I already had to cut into pieces to be able to render it
The part I'm working on right now have 1 066 013 poylgons.

 

Whenever I try to use the BAT preview at zoom 5, I get this: 

 

 

It seems to be a memory problem, I'm using a RAM of 6 GB, and an intell core i7 CPU (2.0HGz).

So is the problem my pc's RAM, or something wrong in my 3dsmax or BAT?

 

 

I used to have this problem with the whole model before I made it into smaller pieces, but when I desactivated the mental ray, the problem was solved.

 

Is there anyway to desactivate the mental ray from the BAT rendering? 

 

 

Thank you for your time

[IL. 1,043]

If I delete the rig lights, the cyan "layer" goes away but whenever I click on the three options for "set rig for" (day/dark nite/maxis nite) it automatically re-appears. There must be something wrong with the light settings I guess. Any idea how to fix that? 

 

 

 

Hello,

 

First, "unhide all", it will show a window with "yes" or "no", choose "yes", then "unfreeze all" and then the same thing, choose "yes". Then, select any visible cameras and lights you can see, and delete them.

 

Try to open a new scene, and import->merge, you'll see a window that ask you to select what do you want to merge (hiarchy, objects, lights, cameras, ...) select only the objects from the list.

 

 

 

P.s.: those circles can be some forgotten splines, so just make a square or whatever splines, then go to edit spline, and click add attach or something like that (the button right below "attach") then if there are any other splines, you'll be able to see them in the selection list, so select what you find, and click ok, then you'll have all the un-used splines that you missed to see in your hands, delete them.

Can someone help to figure out what causing that shadow and how to fix it? Thanks!

 

 

The problem is in the geometry as I can see, there's propably a shape there or a cut or whatever that's causing that shadow.

 

But here's a good way to fix it. Delete, and re-make it, that can't be hard, that's a simple object.

The other triangle on the other side is the same as this one right? Just copy the other one and use the mirror tool, and that's it

 

The tower looks interresting, where's your BAT thread?

[Jasoncw 12,028]

Yeah, it doesn't have enough memory.  You can't turn off mental ray because that is what is being used to render the building (3ds max itself is a modeling program, not a rendering program).

 

I think you should be able to render your building with that much ram. 

 

Something you can check is the size of your textures.  When it's rendering it needs to load your textures into memory, so having large textures can use a lot of memory.  If you have large textures or a lot of textures, you'll want to make them smaller (the pixel dimensions are more important than the filesize in this case, because max converts the images into its own image type internally).

[KevinPaul06 57]

LOL. IL. thanks for trying to help but Jasoncw already told me how to fix it a weeks ago. My BAT thread is Nashville Fifth Third Center. It is not done yet, still need textures and night light. I'm actually stuck coz I'm having a problem. But as soon as I finish it, I'll share it.

[IL. 1,043]

Yeah, it doesn't have enough memory.  You can't turn off mental ray because that is what is being used to render the building (3ds max itself is a modeling program, not a rendering program).

 

I think you should be able to render your building with that much ram. 

 

Something you can check is the size of your textures.  When it's rendering it needs to load your textures into memory, so having large textures can use a lot of memory.  If you have large textures or a lot of textures, you'll want to make them smaller (the pixel dimensions are more important than the filesize in this case, because max converts the images into its own image type internally).

 

 

Yeah that could be it, I have some very large textures for the walls, I'll try to figure something out, or I'll make smaller parts  

I have a feeling that my BAT is going to look redicoulous with all those small pieces. 

LOL. IL. thanks for trying to help but Jasoncw already told me how to fix it a weeks ago. My BAT thread is Nashville Fifth Third Center. It is not done yet, still need textures and night light. I'm actually stuck coz I'm having a problem. But as soon as I finish it, I'll share it.

 

Haha, alright.

[IL. 1,043]

Well, I managed to reduce my polygons count to 48 929, it seems that I had some extremly high poly details (the pillars' capitals) that I have downloaded for free. 

 

Anyway, it's very weird because when I try to see a preview at the zoom 5, it stops and says that the rendering was cancelled, there's an insufficent memory, pleas reduce the details or something like that, and try again.

 

 

But that's very weird because 48 929 is not much at all, even a 2GB RAM should be able to render it.

[IL. 1,043]

I changed my textures are around 800x600 

 

This error did no say the same thing as the other previous errors btw.

 

 

 

However, when I do a manual rendering and choose the frame as 800x600 instead the 4000x6000 that I get from the preview, it works perfectly. Could that be the problem? Is 4000x6000 normal for a 4x2 model at zoom 5 ? 

[Jasoncw 12,028]

That's insanely huge for a BAT.  Double check that the size of your objects are the size that you think they are.  If the BAT is a 4x2, make a plane and manually type in 32m x 64m for the dimensions.  Also look in the lower right corner of the screen where it says "grid = X m" to confirm that you weren't thinking that the grid is a different dimension than what you thought.

[IL. 1,043]

That's insanely huge for a BAT.  Double check that the size of your objects are the size that you think they are.  If the BAT is a 4x2, make a plane and manually type in 32m x 64m for the dimensions.  Also look in the lower right corner of the screen where it says "grid = X m" to confirm that you weren't thinking that the grid is a different dimension than what you thought.

 

The scale and all that was fine.

 

Is there a way to change it manually? 

Should re-install BAT then? 

[Darknono35 3,138]

Hi guys, I think it's my first post here .

 

I've a strange bug when 3ds max 2011 open, after the loading, two small screens open:

 

And when 3ds max is launched, I can't use the graphite tools, I don't know what's happened :/ , I hope someone can help me

[Delecto 941]

I think it's related to a "Preference File" corruption.

 

Have a look here: http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/maxstation/l1_startup_error_error_parsing_xaml_file_root_element_is_missing

[IL. 1,043]

@Darkono35: My magic trick is always a reinstall

But I did see that ribbon thing once or two, it's when I open 3dsmax twice at the same time by mistake, but that error pops out, and only one 3dsmax window is left.

 

 

But for my problem, reinstalling didn't solve anything.

 

i reinstalled the BAT4MAX, and I still get that problem. But it's possibly because the huge size of my BAT, so I tried to make a small test, I rescaled my BAT to 1/10th of the size that it used to have, and then when I tried to see the preview, this is what I got! 

 

 

I know this is very weird, why is the window so long and why all this un-used space? 

 

My rendering problem seemed to be because teh size of the rendering window. How big is the rendering window in the zoom 5 supposed to be? Myne was around 5000x4000, but I guess that's very big.

 

But considering the size of my BAT parts, wich is around 4x3 tiles, let's even say 5x4 tiles if you like, isn't that a too big window? 

 

 

Is there a way to change it manually? I have no problems when I make a manual rendering using the 3dsmax render, but when using the preview, this is what I get.

 

 

Those parts doesnt have much polygons as you can see, some few 100 000s, my RAM is 6Go and i7 CPU, that's 2.0GHz and a 2Go graphic card. 

 

 

 

Any idea??

 

 

 

Thanks. 

Best regards.

[Darknono35 3,138]

Thanks guys for your help, the problem seem to be fixed and 3dsmax was loaded normaly.

IL, your problem, it´s maybe the LOD, try to reduce the hight

[IL. 1,043]

LODs and lights seems to be fine :/

 

 

So I think I'm giving up on this one, I will not be able to export it for Simcity4. Inless someone can :/

 

[IL. 1,043]

It's ok everyone, I fixed that problem, and now what I need to do is cut it into more pieces to export it, the mental ray takes alot of memory and it is needed to export the model.

 

 

Thank you everyone for help

[Jasoncw 12,028]

Even if you do that it will probably not work because it's rendering the building at the wrong size.

 

Try opening max, and without doing anything, go to Customize>Units Setup, and change both the System units and the display units to meters.  For system units there is probably an option for "respect system units in files" and have that option checked.

 

After doing that, click on one of the zoom or rotation buttons, and then click on one of the ltbl buttons to set up the bat4max stuff.  Then model a box, create LODs, and do a preview render.

 

I think if you do those things in that order it will set it up correctly.  Once you've confirmed that the render is the right size, save the scene as something like "BAT-Template.max" and use this as a starting point for your future scenes.  And then you can merge your current BAT into this scene.  You might need to rescale it once you merge it though.

 

 

I have this problem too, and when I start a new BAT I start by opening up another BAT's scene and deleting everything, to ensure that it's correct.  I'm pretty sure the problem has to do how units get converted when bat4max automatically changes the units.

[IL. 1,043]

Even if you do that it will probably not work because it's rendering the building at the wrong size.

 

Try opening max, and without doing anything, go to Customize>Units Setup, and change both the System units and the display units to meters.  For system units there is probably an option for "respect system units in files" and have that option checked.

 

After doing that, click on one of the zoom or rotation buttons, and then click on one of the ltbl buttons to set up the bat4max stuff.  Then model a box, create LODs, and do a preview render.

 

I think if you do those things in that order it will set it up correctly.  Once you've confirmed that the render is the right size, save the scene as something like "BAT-Template.max" and use this as a starting point for your future scenes.  And then you can merge your current BAT into this scene.  You might need to rescale it once you merge it though.

 

 

I have this problem too, and when I start a new BAT I start by opening up another BAT's scene and deleting everything, to ensure that it's correct.  I'm pretty sure the problem has to do how units get converted when bat4max automatically changes the units.

 

 

It worked!! Thanks!  

 

& I'm sure of it because I had some glitches in the rendering due to some extreme angles in the geometry, not much, I'll fix those and then I'm done  

[KevinPaul06 57]

I'm having an error "Bitmap creation failure" when I'm trying to preview the scene.

 

 

I even try erasing all the textures but I'm still having this error. I never had this error when I'm using 2013. I switched to 2012 because I can't fix the light rig problem.