can't get normal to show in viewer...

fritz

hello. i'm using the "normal bump" slot in max material editor. for some reason i'm not getting the normal to show up in the viewer or the render. i've never used the normalbump slot in the material editor so....anyone know what i may be doing wrong?

thanks

MoP

Do you have "DX Display of Standard Material" checked, and the pink/white chequered cube icon in the material editor activated?
If you do and it's still not showing, what kind of graphics card do you have? Does it have the latest drivers?
Weird that it wouldn't show up in the render, since it seems to be working on the material preview sphere, and the material preview spheres are rendered with the default software renderer.

fritz

i have no DX manager button. that would probably do it. where can i hook that thingy up?

THANKS MOP!

MoP

Make sure your viewport is running in the highest DirectX mode - go to Customize -> Preferences -> Viewports tab, then look at the Configure/Change Display Driver info near the bottom - if it says OpenGL, then change it to DirectX 9 if possible, otherwise DX 8.1.

If your graphics card is getting old, it might not be possible to use DirectX9, you'd see if you restarted 3dsmax after changing that then nothing would show up in the viewport.

If you do have DirectX9 configured as the viewport graphics driver, then look in the material editor for a rollout in the standard material parameters, called "DirectX Manager", you might have to scroll down to find it. If it's there, there should be a box you can tick which will enable it.

Otherwise you will have to use the Metal Bump shader, which you can find info on in the Max help file.

fritz

thanks dude!!! that was it. i've been doing 2d for a while now....i totally forgot about the viewport thingy. thanks again man!!!