3DS Max 2021.3 viewport selection issues

DShepard

Hopefully someone here knows what the issue is, cause the official channels have been no help at all. Whenever I try to select a sub-object in Max, seemingly at random it will select something behind it, even with "ignore backfacing" turned on. I've attached a gif of the issue. Doesn't matter if it's verts, edges or faces.



As you can see, some of the selected vertices are correct, but it might be that there aren't anything for max to select behind them.

I need to use max 2021 due to some plugins, but I've tried 2022 and the problem is also present there.

Hope someone can help.

Cathodeus

You need 2022.1 and the Occluded mode activated. It will work with vert and edge as long as you click select. (Draging isn’t supported yet)

thomasp

Looks like the grey axis gizmo is recentering over your selection in line with what you are clicking on and it's the visual highlight of vertex selection that is wrong.

You are not using an AMD videocard or some GPU driver that is much older than the Max version, are you?

Cathodeus

Grey axis do change because vert are selected behind what we see.

The only solution is the nez 2022.1 feature « Occluded mode »

thomasp

How can it be that broken in a 2021+ release though? I have used Max for like 15 years before moving on - I do not recall any situation where it would have behaved this inept and I've seen my fair share of screwups with this program.

DShepard

thomasp said:

You are not using an AMD videocard or some GPU driver that is much older than the Max version, are you?

Nope, I'm using a 2070S+newest studio drivers. The problem wasn't there for me in Max 2014, but after upgrading to 2021 it's been an issue.

I'll try 2022.1 again and see. Really odd.

Thanks for answering, both of you

Cathodeus

@DShepard Here is a gif of what 2022.1 « Occlude mode » stand for :

https://www.facebook.com/groups/stackthis/permalink/1450816541931504/

spacefrog

@DShepard: you could try toggling hardware hittesting
in the MXS Listener type

NitrousGraphicsManager.HardwareHitTestEnabled 

this should report the current state - you can use use

NitrousGraphicsManager.HardwareHitTestEnabled=false

or

NitrousGraphicsManager.HardwareHitTestEnabled=true

to disable or enable hardware hittesting

DShepard

spacefrog said:

NitrousGraphicsManager.HardwareHitTestEnabled=true

That seemed to have a very positive effect! What exactly is the difference?

spacefrog

well ... i guess the name tells itself
if this is set to true, a "new" GPU code path for viewport/mouse hit detection gets used, otherwise this would be done by some legacy CPU code. "New" in that sense meaning "introduced serveral Max releases back" ( dont know/remember exactly when though )

in the first releases there where some serious bugs introduced though:
 like the other viewports getting scaled by a random factor when clicking/selecting in a viewport etc.., so i had it toggled it off via startup script. Seems those bugs do not appear any longer so i guess its save to have it constantly enabled

gandhics

Well.. GPU testing is mot new anymore. That's why it is off by default.
After GPU hit testing is released,. max dev re-did CPU testing. Now CPU hit testing is as fast as GPU, It also has less issue. GPU hit testing has issue with non-mesh objects. SO, CPU testing is default now.

 DShepard could u share a part of model?