3ds max hidden object errors

Rick Stirling

I'm rigging some characters, all built from templates. The old skeleton in the scene needs to be removed, but I have a problem.

With almost every character, when I delete everything from the scene except the model, 4 bones are being left behind. They were wired to the CS biped.

The dont show in the scene. Unfreeze all and unhide all, and unhide by name wont show them, but when I look in the summary information dialogue, there they are.

What I've had to do is reset, merge in the file and only merge the model - it ives me the choice to merge those bones. THis works, but isn't xactly elegant. How can I access these hidden bones normally to delete them?

Rick Stirling

Hmm, I can delete them in the schematic view. Still no idea why they are unhideable though.

Eric Chadwick

I get this sometimes, also with unused maps sticking around. You got it, merge into a new file is the way I solve it too.

Rick Stirling

The schematic thing works - just pop up a new schematic view, and all those objects show as ghosts. Just select them and hit the Delete key, and they are gone.

For unused maps, I wrote a max script that clears the scene.


This bit will kill EVERY material in the scene:

fn kill_materials =
(
max select all
$.material = undefined
)



This function will set all the mat slots to default:
fn clear_all_materials =
(
for i = 1 to 24 do
(
meditMaterials = Standardmaterial ()
)
)


I have a script that we use that cleans the scene, then sets up slots 1 as a mutli sub, names all the materials, copies a set of default TGA files into the models texture folder, then sets up the multi sub to use these files (they are just checker images).

All the character artist has to do then is save the real textures over those base ones. It means our naming convention is always followed.

Eric Chadwick

Hey, I like that. Sounds like a good setup.