3ds Max - Troubleshooting & General Discussion

[Cockatoo 2,256]

I've run into a problem... let's see if somebody can work it out.

In a nutshell I need to find a way to stop one particular object from casting a shadow onto another particular object without affecting anything else in the scene.

I have this...

and I need this...

Turning off receive shadows for the blue object isn't an option because it still needs to get them from the red object and turning off cast shadows for the green object isn't an option because it still needs to cast them onto the yellow object.

Anyone know if this is possible?

[gutterclub 2,729]

What it the blue object, could it be split into 2 parts so 1 of the parts is basically the same size as the greens shadow, you could turn that object to not receive shadows. Very crude

[Cockatoo 2,256]

That’s not a bad idea, I’ll admit doing that didn’t even cross my mind. What I’ve posted above is just a metaphor to make the situation easier to understand (for it, your idea would work perfectly at least for one rotation) but for my real situation it could be a little problematic. I'd have to cut right along the shadow line on a particular view and that’s going to cause other problems. It's worth a shot though so I'll definitely give it a go.

While we’re at it, any other ideas? Is there a function hidden in Max somewhere or a 3rd party tool that lets you do this?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

It should be possible somehow but idk how, or how simple it would be.

I'm curious what situation you're in that you'd need to do that though.

[JakeMD 107]

That missing geometry/rendering issue is still present.. the hotfix didn't seem to fix it. Any other ideas?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

One thing it could be is flipped normals. Faces only have one side. "Normal" is like another way of saying perpendicular, so when you have a face, it means what direction the surface is facing. If the normals are flipped it means that the side of the face that you can see isn't the side you want it to be. You can go in and select faces, and somewhere in the right pane there is a button for flipping the normals, or something alone those lines.

The other problems looks like it might be coplanar geometry. If you imagine you have two faces parallel to each other, the one in the front will cover up the one in the back. It will also cast a shadow on the one in the back. This is totally normal and what you would expect. But if you have two faces that occupy the same space (co-planar), it gets confused. It doesn't know which one should be casting the shadows or receiving the shadows, and it doesn't know which one is in front of the other. So from each cluster of rendering it switches back and forth, so you get this weird checker pattern.

I hope that helps.

[JakeMD 107]

All would be valid reasons why those would show up, but I already checked for those and none of those seem to be occurring. Where it looks like there's coplanar objects, there's really only one object.. The whole roof object is one solid "segment", so the whole roof should be flipped (if it were the normals), wouldn't it?

It's almost like it's rendering through the object, forgetting there's even matter there. Could it have something to do with using it on a different install of Max?

I merged it into a brand new scene/setup after installing the program. I couldn't actually "open" the .scene file. Maybe this has something to do with it?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

You could have more than one sub-object in the space, so it's possible. You'd have to click and select the object, then select the face, and delete it. If there's nothing there anymore then there was only one face there, and if there's still a face there then there must have been two.

For the flipped normals, you would want to try flipping one to see if it works. If the area that's not rendering doesn't correspond to any geometry then idk.

You might have to google the problem and hope you find a solution.

[JakeMD 107]

I might be able to get away with remodeling the parts that seem to be having the problem, so far they aren't too complicated. ahhhh

Thanks for helping, Jason, I'll try those ideas out tomorrow.

[SAVAGExPHOENIX 955]

I had that problem too. There's a quick fix to it. Press F10 (Render Setup) and go to the Renderer tab. Scroll down and change the Raytrace Acceleration Method from BSP 2 to BSP. This little trick fixed it without adverse affects for me.

[JakeMD 107]

Wow, this seems to have worked! Did you mess with the size/depth at all?

EDIT

sigh! Some views it works and some views the error is still there.

[IDS2 3,346]

Hey all, so I was goofing around with mr sky portal and I'd like to adjust its height by a couple of meters but I've scoured my scene and I can't select it or even see it in the viewport even though it still shows up in the preview render. Any ideas?

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

I can install Bat4Max

What to do

[gutterclub 2,729]

Huh?

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

I did what the thread told me but i get an error

[harishna 847]

wow how do you expect anyone to be able help you when you elaborate your point in such a complex and detailed way? What I mean is be more specific, I don't think anyone here is so good at reading minds...

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Sorry for not explaing my problem

click

Simcity4deluxe has the same problem

and look at this

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Where do I find tutorials on how to use 3ds Max 2012 (I know, Jasoncw already made some tutorials but I'm searching for tutorials which are explaining the basics)

[gutterclub 2,729]

Have you actually tried searching in Google? There literally hundreds..

[harishna 847]

I have been contacted by Silverazul about this problem since his use of English is limited (not that mine is any better) I decided to post this for him. He is having troubles with his renders, he is using 3ds Max 8 with BAT4MAX installed the only weird thing he recons to happend is that when he applies the SKY he gets this error : environmentMap = mr_Physical_Sky (). It is also important to note that he installed BAT4MAX after creating the model.

I have already suggested him to reset cameras and lights.

I also suggested him to create a simple box and rendering it these are the results:

  Edited November 24, 2011 by harishna  

[Jasoncw 11,840]

What are the renders in the first row? The one on the far right looks correct. The other two don't. The problem might be gamma related. For 3ds Max 8 you need to do some extra steps to set up gamma, and these are explained in the BAT4Max v5 instructions.

About the mr Physical Sky, I'm trying to remember but I don't think 3ds max 8 has that feature. I think that's something that was added to a later version of max.

[harishna 847]

From left to right: Maxis Night, DarkNite, Day. I also thought about gamma he claims he had already adjusted gamma accordingly to his version, I will have to trust him on that one...

  Edited November 24, 2011 by harishna  

[Jasoncw 11,840]

ohhh, I see. Yeah I don't really know what's going on unfortunately.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

I ve got a problem with my preview.

You can see the ground floor but only the windows are shown.

Solved the problem

  Edited November 25, 2011 by skyscraper241  

[SimFox 802]

I have been contacted by Silverazul about this problem since his use of English is limited (not that mine is any better) I decided to post this for him. He is having troubles with his renders, he is using 3ds Max 8 with BAT4MAX installed the only weird thing he recons to happend is that when he applies the SKY he gets this error : environmentMap = mr_Physical_Sky (). It is also important to note that he installed BAT4MAX after creating the model.

I also suggested him to create a simple box and rendering it these are the results:

I think there may be some other light rig perhaps stack in the actual scene file. Day view looks fine cause old rig's brightness is negligible compared to the new day rig, but that changes at night, and you see all the nasty effects of it in both cube and the model... But that's just a thought... I would suggest to take a look at the actual file.

[harishna 847]

Thanks SimFox I asked SilverAzul to check again the gamma settings and he said they have rolled back to the original settings (could this be because he made the model before installing BAT4MAX?

[silverazul 2]

now the problem in the game

  Edited November 28, 2011 by silverazul  

[harishna 847]

Silverazul provided me his 3dsmax scene,

I tried opening it and got the following error: The Scene XRef file: "C:\gamepacks\BAT\scenes\CamLightRigs\TB2_CameraLightRig.max" can not be found

Then I tried to render a preview, however, I get a "Couldn't find camera Zx" error, I tried re-setting the cameras and rigs and still no luck even when I try to change from day to night I get the same error.

Any ideas?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

If that's really the entire path then he installed BAT4Max wrong. It should be something more like C:\3ds Max\gamepacks\BAT\etc. or C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max\gamepacks\etc. Although I'm not sure if BAT4Max should work at all if it were installed there.

[SimFox 802]

Harishna, could you send file to me?