Misplaced textures are shown in the render view [3DSMax]

D4N005H

Hello!

Please look at the picture below, You could see there is one line in the road but it is 3 in the render view! How to fix this?! (I already google searched but I haven't found a solution for this, although I've found a same topic for Blender but because of the different software that I work with, it was not useful)

D4N005H

No one knows why that happened? Should I describe the problem more?

Revel

I guess it's a UV error, probably you can show us your UV layout? Also I notice that the diffuse and normal are on different UV scale, did you use different UV channel between those 2 textures?

Eric Chadwick

Yeah that's probably it.

If in the Material Editor you go to the material and turn on Show Material in Viewport, Max can't show more than one UV at a time. All your bitmaps will only display using one of the UVs. But the render is the "correct" use of all the UV channels.

However you can show both UVs if you have a Composite map... go to that map and turn on Show Material in Viewport. Then both UVs will appear in the viewport. You can also toggle each individual map.

Eric Chadwick

Also, since you're using V-Ray, you can get a better viewport result if you use V-Ray RT.
http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3/V-Ray+RT

D4N005H

Well , thanks for your answers and also thanks for the VRay RT tip. But I didn't get what you guys mean.

I just made a composite material and assigned it the materials. all of them have their "Show in viewport" option enabled.

Also I tried to disable/enable "Show in viewport" in "MAP #3" and "MAP #14" but nothing changed. (Map #14 has the texture of the between of the road - not the sideways)
Here's a view of the materials.


@Revel How would I show the layot you wanted to see? (I'm not professional,though)

Also Normal map and the diffuse map have same a size (1024*1024) and also I copied and pasted the "Tiling and UV parameters" of diffuse one to the normal mapm but the normal map looks way bigger (scaled) than the diffuse map.... it's puzzling!

Revel

Yeah, I think you're not that familiar with the concept of UVs, so probably you can start of do a research about "UV in 3ds max". That also one of the reason why your diffuse and normal are on different scale.

Basically, UVs are how you arrange your flattened 3d objects on a 2d space.

huffer

But what's with all those UV Xform's modifiers?

Revel

To be honest I never really use that, I always use Unwrap UVW modifier when it comes to UV my model.

You want to check out Textools by Renderhjs to help you UV your model.

Eric Chadwick

UVW Xform modifier lets you change scale/rotation/position of existing UVs. Helpful if you know you need a certain numerical offset.

Which version of Max are you using? This is a good tutorial for Max 2016:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2016/ENU/?guid=GUID-72EDF161-E5BC-4B43-86B9-08FE4A58AEB6

Eric Chadwick

Also, the modifier stack in your first screenshot is a mess. This is a really bad way to work, since any changes below the top modifier will often cause bad results.

Many modifiers are dependent on the vertex order staying the same. If you change it, you're going to get all sorts of bad things.

It's best to work as "flat" as possible, meaning with as few modifiers as possible, and collapse the stack often.

D4N005H

Revel wrote: »

Yeah, I think you're not that familiar with the concept of UVs, so probably you can start of do a research about "UV in 3ds max". That also one of the reason why your diffuse and normal are on different scale.

Basically, UVs are how you arrange your flattened 3d objects on a 2d space.

Yup, Okay. thanks.

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Also, the modifier stack in your first screenshot is a mess. This is a really bad way to work, since any changes below the top modifier will often cause bad results.[...]

Yeah okay, I collapsed it.
(after collapsing, still the problem exist. I said that just in case,though)

Well still I don't know how to overcome adding textures to roads, here's my scenario for adding textures which looks not so good.

D4N005H

Note!

The problem of the UV error is now fixed by making an other but same material as the old one and then assign the new material to the object.

Since I don't know what actually happened that the problem was caused, I am going to change my method of creating roads (described in the last post) to another one. Because I see same error occurred for some other roads,too.

If anyone know what's the problem and familiar with this kind of problem, tell me why this happened and how to avoid this kind of error later for the future the roads that I'm making later.

Otherwise, I am listening to your advices of how to do so in a different way.

D4N005H

Guys, Same error happened for another object. Please download this and open it to see if you can find the troublemaker. (The problem is that the UVs are showing differently in a rendered frame and the view port)

http://www.mediafire.com/download/1fai6kcyxuidneo/TheProblem.rar
This file has the textures with normal maps in it, you are allowed to use those textures for your personal/commercial works.

Eric Chadwick

Here's an example to play with, a better way to approach a road in Max. There are many ways to do this though.
http://ericchadwick.com/examples/files/2015-05-05_road-loft-max2015.zip
You'll need to tweak this to make it pretty, but should give you a basis to start from.


Note: Your normal maps should never be JPG format. The lossy compression will cause lighting errors. Better to use TGA or PNG or TIFF.

Your UVs on your existing road mesh are easily fixable. UVW Unwrap, Face mode, select the whole strip, Relax, then Straighten Selection. http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-9E98AEAC-F06F-4FAD-9091-DCD30AC9BB26

Your sand and road textures should be edited in Photoshop to be tiled. Cropping them in the Material Editor like I did isn't enough, you need to disable the cropping and fix the edges instead (tile them in PS).

I hope this helps!

D4N005H

The file you sent me is newer than my 3DSMax version. I use Max 2014, would you save the file as an older version?

And I have two questions, Will it be okay if I use "UV Xform" modifier for creating a road? I want to use UV XForm because I want to have one material for all of same roads.
And is it bad not to use composite material for the road? I mean is it okay to make the road's line and dirt layers flattened in Photoshop and then use a standard material in 3DsMax? I asked it because I'm worry about the amount of data that ram deserves, I want to make these roads for a game and not for animation.

Eric Chadwick

Ah, you didn't say it was for a game! I assumed you meant to do it inside Max only, since you're using Render and you're using V-Ray, two things rarely used (if ever) for making game art.

Oh well, I updated the zip with another max file, for 2014. Worth a look anyhow I guess.

For games, you want to use a multi-texture approach. It's different for each game engine though. Which one do you plan to use?

Some info here about multi-texturing for games
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture


Edit... forgot to reply about UVW Xform. It doesn't matter if you use that modifier. It's just one way to tweak UVs in Max. Most game artists just use UVW Unwrap.

You should avoid doing any UV tweaks in the Material Editor. These are typically not exportable. Only do your UV tweaks via modifiers.

D4N005H

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Ah, you didn't say it was for a game! I assumed you meant to do it inside Max only, since you're using Render and you're using V-Ray, two things rarely used (if ever) for making game art.[...]

For games, you want to use a multi-texture approach. It's different for each game engine though. Which one do you plan to use?

Some info here about multi-texturing for games
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture

[...] It doesn't matter if you use that modifier. It's just one way to tweak UVs in Max. Most game artists just use UVW Unwrap.

You should avoid doing any UV tweaks in the Material Editor. These are typically not exportable. Only do your UV tweaks via modifiers.

Thanks for your informative reply I've read it carefully. Yes I wanted to create the roads for a game and then at the same time I render them by V-Ray so that I could see the results and.... make my self more happy! actually those rendered frames would be useful for advertising and showing my game process to my friends,though.

The game engine would be Unity3D However I should make the island first and then we use the game engine.

You said that "For games, you want to use a multi-texture approach. It's different for each game engine though." does it mean that I should not add texture on an object in 3DsMax but with Unity3D?


Now that I explained my project with more information, Would you recommend me a way to create a road for that? I saw you've used "loft" for the road. Is this a good choice?

Eric Chadwick

If you're making game assets, the best way to show them off is in a game engine. That is, if you ever want a job working in game development. Game devs don't care about V-Ray skills, as much as they care about game engine skills.

Besides, rendering in V-Ray requires time to set up materials to work with V-Ray, and lighting, render settings, etc. all in Max. This is time which could be better spent in Unity creating a kick-ass looking real-time game scene.

Roads are usually best created in the game engine, using a tool. For example:
Road Architect

But if you have to create a specific road shape, then yeah, Loft is a good choice. Nice thing about Loft is it creates the curved UVs automatically.

Multi-texturing in Unity is done through shaders. These are setup differently than materials in Max. Creating a complex blending material in Max is a waste of time, if your goal is to get it working in Unity. None of that work is going to import into Unity. Look up "blend shaders" in the asset store.

D4N005H

Thanks for the info. I appreciate your advice. I am creating roads according to a map and the roads should look realistic, So I guess I should continue creating them in 3DsMax.

I've learned lots of things here, I will show my project as soon as possible in this informative forum.

D4N005H

One question, How would I actually "normalize" the distance of each horizontal edges in the unwrap UV editor? I mean I want those edges have same distance of those which are next to them.

Eric Chadwick

In the "Quick Transform" rollout at top right, see the button with the five vertical dots and the up/down arrows? That'll space one column of verts.

There's also the crazy-polygons-shaped button under Reshape Elements. That will work on a large set of faces, as long as they're equirectangular.

Look them up in the Help.
http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2016/ENU/?guid=GUID-9E98AEAC-F06F-4FAD-9091-DCD30AC9BB26