missing maps nightmare in Max

tharmine

Hi all,

I am working on somebody else work in Max and what he left me is a bloody mess.
I have a serie a missing texture at loading the scene, but there is no way I can find what is using them in my file. He created massive multi sub material which make the search very difficult. I tried the script Super Material Pro to remove the supposed missing maps, but even if it sees them, it won't remove them .
Well, I am looking for a tip here on how I can get rid of them, either by finding what is using them (obviously nothing, but i may have missed something) or by directly deleting them.
Thank you for your precious help!!!

thomas

monster

In the Utility Panel there is a tool called "Bitmap/Photometric Paths". This tool will show you what bitmaps are missing, and what objects have them applied.

Also in the Material Editor under the Utility menu at the top, there tools called Clean-MultiMaterial, Condense Material Editor Slots, and Reset Material Editor Slots.

Mark Dygert

First do like monster suggested and reset the material editor. Material Editor > utilities > reset material editor slots. Since there is a good chance most of those aren't being used in the scene. Don't worry it won't delete any materials assigned to objects and you can still access them, it just dumps all the crap you don't need.

You might want to be careful with the clean multi-materials option. I've had it reassign material ID's and consolidate materials it thought where dupes, but weren't. Try it out, it might work fine, just save before doing it.

To see what materials are in your scene in the material editor window click get material (looks like a little blue sphere with an arrow) > set it to from scene. There are all of your materials that are currently used by objects along with their paths and if they are missing or not. If you leave this window open you can easily jump to every material and sub material in your scene and only use up one material slot, very handy.

Then open up the asset tracking window to reset your paths. File > Asset Tracking. Hit refresh and see if it dumps a bunch of the files since you just cleared out the material editor window To set a new path for all of them, highlight all the files > right click > set path.

The next time your buddy saves you out a file, have him archive it File > Archive.... So it grabs all the textures and stuffs them in a zip file. If you unzip the file and don't move anything, it will auto recognize the paths.

tharmine

thank you guys. All your fixes were tested and failed. Ultimately, i found what object was using the incorrect texture and deleted it.
But thank you for your help, muxh appreciated.

thomas

FatAssasin

For future reference, textures can also be stored in modifiers where it's hard to track down. If you still have a copy of the file with that objects in it, try just collapsing the stack on it and see if that works.

tharmine

good idea yes. But my main problem was that i had more than 500 objects, and to find the right one was difficult. The problem find multisub material, is that you can not select object my material (or not that i am aware of).

Eric Chadwick

FWIW, there's an icon on the right side of the Material Editor, four colored balls with a black pointer, "Select By Material." Selects all meshes that use the currently-selected material.

tharmine

yes, but if it is in a multi sub material, and all the meshed are using that multisub material, then you get all the meshes selected

Mark Dygert

If it was a missing map that was causing the issue, and you didn't need the map and it was just the error message that was annoying you, you can "strip path" for all missing textures in the asset tracking window and it won't pop up any more. Or if you needed to find the map just use the asset tracking to replace it with some obnoxious texture. Asset Tracking.

Also you can find the names of the missing maps in asset tracking browser and use the material/map navigator (just under the button EricChadwick mentioned) to find it quickly by name, in the multi material.