3DSMax: Objects Invisible on Scene Merge

scrawld

I am trying merge a bunch of objects from one scene into another, but they are coming in completely invisible. They're not in a hidden layer, and I've gone through the display settings and found no problems there. I can find them in the scene explorer, and when I select them the transform controllers show up. I can also select it by drag selecting over where it should be in the scene, so it's definitely there.

I think it's some how related to materials. When I merge I get dialogue warning there are duplicate material names, and I can either choose 'Use Merged Materials' or 'Use Scene Materials'. If I choose 'Use Scene Materials' (which is what I want to do) they come in hidden. Using merge scene replaces existing materials in the scene, which isn't what I want to do. I've tried importing them, but if they have a material name that matches an existing one, they come in invisible too.

Does anyone know what could be causing it?

It seems like a bug to me, and what's weird is if I delete the imported objects and then undo to bring them back, they re-appear :poly142:. But I've had the problem for a while, and I'd rather find a fix than a working around.

Mark Dygert

Do you get anything in the modifier stack? Can you apply an edit poly and do an "unhide all" while in element mode (the unhide all button in the modifier not the scene command).

What does it look like if you switch to wireframe mode?
What version of max? Is it the latest service pack?
What is the viewport set to, nitrous dx11, dx10, dx9, Software?
What kind of videocard do you have?
When was the last time you updated your drivers?
Have you tried resetting xform on the objects before importing them?

Are they objects you've exported from other apps like zbrush? What format did you use obj, fbx? I've run into similar problems with obj's exported from zbrush. Sometimes it's fully transparent like you are seeing (or not, ha) and sometimes it won't display the diffuse material until I destroy the material and recreate it, even then sometimes it won't work and I have to export the transparent mesh again from max, as another format like fbx and then import it again to get a clean mesh.

scrawld

Thanks for your reply,

I was going through your questions and saw I was on nitrous. I switched to direct3D and I didn't get the problem. That made me think it was a bug. So I checked for a service pack, updated and the problem looks like it's solved. I don't know why that didn't occur to me try and do that sooner. Thank you very much for your help.

I also wasn't aware there was a hide function built into the edit poly modifier, so I learned something new too.

For what its worth here are the answer's to your question, should anyone else get the same problem.

Objects were also invisible in wireframe.
Vanilla 3DSMax 2012 64bit (doh!)
Nitrous, DX11
Nvidia 560Ti with latest drivers.
Resetting xforms, applying edit poly and unhiding didn't help

Thanks again