3ds Max - Troubleshooting & General Discussion

[JEC 100]

andisart, you just have to use 'volume lights'.

Go to Rendering>Environment then to Environment and Effects, then Add: choose Volume Light, then Pick Light (assuming you already created a source, most likely a spotlight of some sort).

You should play around with the settings as it does not always produce the best effect.

[AndisArt 2,066]

Awesomeness JEC, thanks for the tip, man!

Look what I was able to do now:

[sithlrd98 66]

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssss,me likes alot!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I'm wondering, how does it affect the transparency masks for the .FSH files?  Does the light count as nothing (like non-volumetric light would), or does it count as an object (like a translucent object) and is seen in the BAT with the matting behind it as well?

Does my question make sense?

[ardecila 124]

The transparency masks are generated from the alpha channels of the renders. The cone is included in the alpha channel, so theoretically, yes.

However, when brought into SC4, the cone would show up as opaque unless settings were changed in iLive, allowing more than the two basic states (invisible or visible) for each pixel in the FSH.

[autoVino 26]

wait, how exactly would you allow transparency for bats?  I mean, I have renders with a very nicely anti aliased background.  It shows up well in the fsh alpha files, but when in the game it's an ugly jagged line.  How would you allow this transparency? (what do you need to do in iLive... I'm no modding expert here )

[ardecila 124]

It's not complicated, just tedious and time-consuming. I'll explain it later. Be forewarned, though, it uses substantially more resources, so it will slow your game down.

Just to prove to you that it's possible, search for "cogeo" on the STEX and go to #30.

[AndisArt 2,066]

When I tried to export it it doesn't even show up in the render...

Hm, so I guess there is no way it will be hidden ingame.

[SimFox 802]

wow wow wow! and wow on top!

Volumentics are FUN!!!

Ardecila!! plz! plz, plz do the looong explanation!! I think it is a greatly needed thing and if used cautiously shouldn't too much of a problem especially with proliferation of quad-cores and modern graphic cards that I think may take this blending on their shoulders.

Andisart you volumetrics do not show in export cause in script all the atmosphere effects are disabled. Just remove that line (legacy of I don't know what since GMAX does support them (just like it does bump mapping and some rudimentary aa) and it should work.

[AndisArt 2,066]

Ok sounds like a chance, but how would I do that? I have no clue yet about script editing..

[bixel 1,223]

Originally posted by: bixel OK I tried another full render of Island Harbourview. I got to about zoom2 when it decided to fail. This time I went ahead and did the fsh build and the dat insert so technically I got a working model but no zoom 1 & 2 (or is it zoom 4 and 5?? whichever are the smaller zooms).

Tried the modified buildingmill script with zoom = 3 changed to 2. After its first pass at South it fails when it begins the East pass.

I will try one more time and see what happens.

BTW: I am using 3DS Max 7 - perhaps there are some things happening that was written for max 9??? I have max 9 should I try exporting it there??quote>

I still have not gotten past this point - but I do have a working model about 13 megs that is zoom 5,4,3 & 2. I really want to get this one out so I can complete Olympian City Mall. Do you really think its my LODs? However the 1st 4 LODs are the most crucial. At this point I am almost considering releasing it as is. Is LOD 1 only used in the regions menu??

[autoVino 26]

I don't know what is happening here, apperently one of the variables doesn't exist.  Probably might have something to do with the fact that this came from gmax and is very volatile and unpredictable in its behavior (it should work most of the time, but when it doesn't it's near impossible to figure out what's wrong), but a word of warning, be very very careful when exporting each zoom at a different time.  Make sure that you back up the files after each rendering session otherwise, in the next rendering session, some of the files may dissapear.  This has happened to me before and it was very frustrating having to re-render an entire model.
You can try to do it manually, but you'll have to ask SimFox on help with that.

[Mr. Glamazon 9]

Hi guys!  So, I finally figured got that script problem figured out.  I had put the wrong locations in a few lines of the .ini file from BAT4MAX. 

And today, the first day of a three day weekend (can anyone say leisurely?), has been the only time to work with the programme at all!  (sometimes real life sucks, hahaha)  Anyway, after converting my current project from a Gmax file to a 3DSMax file, I discovered a couple of things that didn't exist before. 

Firstly, all of the colours are gone.  I know the UVW maps would be gone, etc... but even when I select certain parts of the building and change their colours, it still looks like this:

Am I doing something wrong?  I'm pretty sure it should change colours. 

Secondly, if you take a look at this next picture, you'll see all kinds of extraneous little lines that I never put in there:

See?  You can see the outline of the elements of the building, but then there's a whole spider-web of lines in there that I never made! 

I'm sure it's something simple, but a little help would be gr-eat.

[autoVino 26]

I don't know anything about the color problem, but those lines probably came from the conversion, for some reason it probably changed the face type to triangles instead of quads.  They are just where the face is divided and you may be able to get rid of them if you convert all the faces in the model to quads (right now they're triangles).  It's normal.

[SimFox 802]

The colors (different onese9 are gone cause now it is one mesh. (did you do your conversion as 3ds?)

and as mesh it displays, as auto-Vino mentioned, triangles and not "normal" polygons. - convert it to editable poly and those extra lines will most probably be gone.

As for your original vertex color - it is gone. Of course you can assign new one, but now it is one mesh and it will all be of same color.

If you want you can break it into pieces again.

[toxicpiano 125]

I have grown tired of the stupidy of windows in general and yearned for something more 'fun' to use. Well I've just made a big switch to mac os x . Yes indeed I went to the dark side. In reality I am basically planning to use my new imac for most things (And my old still fairly ok pc for games and stuff like that). It's a shame there is no max for OSX. Maya is for both windows and MAX. Are there major differences between the two, would I have to everything all over again?

[SimFox 802]

Toxic... you can give a go to Modo form Luxology:

www.luxology.com

sweet little program!!

Maya is more for animation, it's polygonal toolset is quite weak...

[bixel 1,223]

Autovino: Well I sent my gigantic Island Harbourview to my friend in San Fransisco, he's working for a 3d company and they are going to have their render farm export the model for me. In return I give them the model for their use. but anyway well see how they do.

[JakeMD 107]

This may have been asked before, but im confused as to how to install the BAT for 3ds max 7. right now, i have the BAT for maxfolder in the max plugins and thats it, can i ibe helped?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

SWAT-MEDIC, have you read the instructions yet?  The BAT folder doesn't go into the plugins folder.

[Mr. Glamazon 9]

Hi SWAT-MEDIC. Make sure you put the folder in the 3DSMax root directory, although I'm not sure what good it will do, as the ReadMe said that Bat4Max wasn't available for version 7 yet. I could have downloaded an older version of the file though.

[JakeMD 107]

the problem is, i dont know what a root folder is, let alone where it is, i heard it was the plugins folder somewhere...but mabye i cant get the BAT for max7 then...hmmm

[autoVino 26]

Your folder should be installed to drive:\3dsmax7.  If it is installed into program files then you may have trouble rendering. the drive:\3dsmax7 folder (drive bing C:\ or D:\ in my case) is the root directory.  Put the gamepacks folder there and continue on from the instructions (the instructions are very important!  Make sure you do not deviate from what they say or you may get some nasty trouble.)

Good luck with 3ds max!

[JakeMD 107]

thanks, now i get a bunch of errors saying cannot find specific file, then anaddress to the file that cannot be opened, I followed the directions to exactly what they say, and i still dont see a BAT, can some body fix this?

[bixel 1,223]

autovino has it correct, 3dmax7/gamepacks/BAT/etc...

READ THE INSTRUCTIONS

[JakeMD 107]

i do, dont think i didn't, ive almost got it, but in the meantime, i have created something, check it out in my BAT thread.

[Berethor07 110]

Hello everybody,

I want to export my first 3ds project, but when the render becomes around 60-70% the render fails and this message error appears:

I test the export without nitelite and the export works fine, but when i used nitelite the export fails.

How can I fix this problem?

[DarkEldar 6]

Yeah Berethor07 your problem is it cant render daytime fully, theres either something wrong with your 3ds max or lack of memory this is all the information i can give you sorry.The source of this is from the BAT-Mega FAQ if you want to check that out.

[SimFox 802]

hm... I've run into new problem with MAX and BAT.

It is Unit related.

For some reason I had to change my MAX system units from meters to inches, and now when time came to export one building I run into this problem - When I press Render BAT screen start flashing (thins could be something linked to my specific card) and after two or so minutes I get message that export had failed with error code 6. I had a nagging suspicion that this has to do something with units as when I tried to export LODS I have to enable unit conversion while importing them to GMAX, otherwise thye were completely out of wack with the scale of things. So I've converted my scene to m as system units. and it proceeded normally to render, but there was a problem, I would say a big one. The Globall illumination was ALL WRONG. if sunny and open sky facing sides of the structure were not affected in any noticeable way the areas in the shadow just droped into blackness. Gone were beautiful transparent shadows I'm managed to set up by tinkering with GI photons for days. All the settings were absolutely untouched and still this major difference. Sometime agaoI came across statement made by very experienced Mental Ray user who said " don't touch you system for you'll case major havoc with Mental Ray" IT the time I thought it to bvery strange as I've been doing it and didn't notice anything of the sort. But apparently it only affects GI photons and not FG for instance.

here is an illustration of what I mean:

the building on the left was rendered with System units kept as Inches, one on the right after conversion to meters

Again only system units were changed all the building measurements were always in meters.

Funny thing is that if I set max to meters, open inch scene and do the conversion on opening, save it exit max open it again and load this converted scene all GI again seem to work fine just as it was in Inch setup, but it I try to export I again run in the same problem as in the very beginning. I guess Max simply resets something on the save. I think one thing that should have flashed warning flags was SCALE word used... Scale tool and the very process in MAX is something of an oddity. As it doesn't affect the underliyng size of scaled object but just a put lable on in it saying display at this size. apparently this label is overlooked by some operations, say by GI calculation and something else. The problem with Exporting inche scene most probably stems from the fact that script in determining the size of the render output window makes some calculations on the total object size (taken from LODS) and adds to it 8 units on the sides... And I guess problem occurs when it try to determine what those units are suppose to be. Also if I try to export LODS from such converted save and reopened scene and don't do the unit conversion when importing them into GMAX LODS come to be 39 times larger then they suppose to be - the exact difference between Inch and Meter. Max obviously somehow reverted to inches in it's internal calculations. that 's why GI again looks fine and, naturally export AGAIN fails!

My question to people using BAT4MAX with default settings on MAX (those who didn't go and change system units to meters) can you export?? what is the settings of your WIindows system units?? (I believe that GMAX uses as its system unit the one set in Windows)...

this is a big problem... I've spent 2 days trying to get GI tin meter setup to look exactly like in inch one but so far without much success... I tried all way to affect photons I could think of - changing they decay rate, the number of them emitted, their energy and combination of all those, And although I got my shadows back to more or less same state there are significant side effects - like way over the top color bleed. There are other problems as well. So much that i can say that MR GI doesn't work at least this is a case for fully set converted scene, I have a feeling that it may be different story when scene was started in meters from get go, with all the shaders were created in meter environment and so on...

[autoVino 26]

The rendering problem most likely has something to do with the fact that the lighting rig is in meters and has a system of meters.  I had this problem before.
I don't know exactly how to make it work with system units set to inches, but I would try setting the lighting rig system units to inches and working from there.
The reason that the script crashes is that the rig thinks that the lods are much larger then they should be.  The script can only handel a so large an lod (this should be independednt of how powerful your computer is, there is a limit to the size of the lod the script can hold) which is determined by some algorithim that I don't really understand and don't plan to .

But it's probabyy because of a difference in the system units of the lighting rig, your scene, and gmax.  If you remove this difference, it may work, but I'm not at all sure. 
(I may have mistyped a couple of things, I'm not all with my self after my running)