Upgraded from Max 2010 -> 2013, new default lighting looks weird.

Nash

Hi, for the longest time I have stuck with Max 2010, and only recently I've upgraded to Max 2013 x64.

I notice that the default lights have this weird... "chrome-y" look to it, for lack of a better word. I don't know if this was introduced in prior Max versions (2011 or 2012) or if it's exclusive to 2013, but it definitely looks different than what I am used to seeing in 2010 and below.

This "chrome-y" lighting persists in the viewport and as well as renders (using default settings) so it's not a viewport-only issue.

On top of that it looks the same regardless of whether I used Nitrous or Direct3D.

Does anyone else see what I am seeing, understands what I am talking about, and know how to restore the old behaviour?

pior

You might have the "2 lights" option turned on. It's in the same viewport preference panel where selection brackets and bounding box display are enabled, and I think it's on by default in some versions of Max.

Hope this fixes it!

P

Nash

Hey pior, thanks for the quick reply. Yes, that seems to be exactly it. Setting it to "1 light" seems to bring the display closer* to what I'm used to seeing all these years.

I guess at some point Autodesk decided to change the default settings.

There doesn't seem to be a way to change this globally, so I'll have to end up changing the viewport settings for every single scene that have been created in older versions of Max, one at a time.

* The "chrome" look is gone, but the lighting still looks too strong, like it's heavily contrasted. In old versions, the lighting looks slightly more dull and washed out. I'm guessing they changed the default gamma settings too.

Thanks!

cptSwing

maybe if you saved the current configuration to your maxstart.max (was that what it was called?), and 'merged' the old scenes into a fresh one?

Mark Dygert

Yep they changed the default gamma/lut settings too. If you open your material editor and all the materials look washed out its the gamma/lut being turned on.

cptSwing's suggestion should take care of it. Why they do stuff like that I'm not sure... maybe just to fool people into thinking things have changed when they really haven't?

Max2014 now with "different" defaults!!1 You buy now K!?

Nash

You can imagine the shock I had the first time I saw this "Slate Material Editor"... I mean, I guess it isn't so bad, it's not like I haven't done node-based stuff yet... but the "switch to compact material editor" button was swiftly pressed. =P