3ds Max not showing vertices

erik!

NEVERMIND! Reset Max, Open scene = DONE.

Actually I am curious to know what causes the problem mentioned below

Now here's a funny thing.. As of right now, Max has ceased to display vertices. Well, actually I see they're there, but only 1 pixel large. When I modify the size of the verts in my preferences (usually they're at 3) they display correctly once I hit ok, but as soon as I move in the viewport they disappear. Another weird thing is the vert colors changed briefly as well, they became much darker. This has happened to me before and somehow I fixed or it righted itself, but can't remember how.
Another note, I've got a large amount of DX materials in my scene which I am now consolidating. Max 08 BTW.

Any suggestions?

pior

Happens to me all the time, iirc there is one specific stack modifier combination causing this. Will try to dig it up!

sir-knight

I found if the computer goes into sleep mode or screen saver while the max window is open verts can disappear, and end up showing only wireframes even though you have smooth/highlights on.

thomasp

my box at work does that as well. looks like geforce graphics driver problem tho since it works fine at home with a quadro... likewise can't recall having the vertices disappear on the home setup but have encountered it a few times at work.

sir-knight

I had a quadro fx card on my old work machine that did it as well, on a geforce8200 now I think, does the same thing.

FAT_CAP

Yeah this happens to me when the screensaver has kicked in - very annoying

I found that instead of a resave, shutdown and restart if you go into the Customize> Preferences> Viewports tab and next to Show Vertices as Dots there is a size spinner - changing this up or down will make the verts display properly on OK-ing this

Tumerboy

I have no idea what causes it, but I know how to fix it (most of the time)

Select your object, go into Vertex mode, and hit "unhide all" like you would with polies. WHY you can hide vertices, I don't understand.

jeremy price

a band aid fix, but by converting the mesh to editable poly again the verts should show up. No idea what causes it either.

MoP

It happens to me sometimes, it seems like it's resetting the vertex draw size (default is 4 pixels or something), it seems to go back to 1px because I can still sometimes see the verts glittering in and out of view under the wireframe.

The way I always seem to be able to fix this is by selecting all vertices then go to Scale mode, the verts draw proper size after that, no restart/reopen needed.

steady

haha thanks for these tips, i've encountered this problem a few times!

Szark

This happens quite often to me, the way I fix it is maximising one of the orthographic views and then the verts come back.

gd77

This is cause when you use direct X driver and not openGL, to fix it just go to , Preferences--> Viewports ---> click on choose drivers botton then enable Redraw scene on windows expose, for big scenes polygons count, disable it or it will be problem when opening the scene or rotating it...

hosch

I have not verified what causes this, but the driver makes sense. What I have verified is this is not something (at least in my experience) that is isolated to a specific file or for 3ds Max overall, but rather specific to a certain object. Here is how I have solved this issue in the past (and it happens to me at least a couple times a week) I export the object as an OBJ and then reimport it - merging into a new file does not seem to work for this problem.

When I have this issue other objects in the same file do not have the issue - just the object I was working on at the time. It is like the object itself gets some sort of curruption and the OBJ export/import cures the problem.

This occurred for me in both Vista and Windows 7 (which is not yet supported by Autodesk).

Hope this helps.

Mark Dygert

I've had verts disapear and they don't show up if I unhide all in vert mode. Normally going down to element mode and doing an unhide all takes care of the problem. Never understood why or how...

mLichy

Yeah, I've ran into this too... I would like to know why it happens as well.

Shogun3d

Doesn't vertex paint on stack automatically sets vertex hidden mode? I've had this problem occur mostly during vertex painting.

Ruz

I ahve got so used to this I just don't bother and select where the verts look like they are supposed to be

Alberto Rdrgz

Mop had it right... thats the same thing that happens to me and i have a geforce right now.

Jeremy Wright

Ruz wrote: »

I ahve got so used to this I just don't bother and select where the verts look like they are supposed to be

Same here. I never seemed to have this issue until I started testing out directx viewport shaders.

Alberto Rdrgz

you know what i just figured out..... when ever it hapens to me, right away i start flipping thru the the tools (scale, move, rotate...) till they come back and usually for the most part they come back right away.

Lokies

If you have the problem where its just the one object not showing verts you can just create a primitive> convert edit poly> attach your problem object> delete your primitive element. As a side note I suggest being at top level when doing so.

TP-Oreilly

I know this is an old discussion so you all probably know, they may be hiding because you all have "show end result on/off toggle" switched on, if you turn it off the vertices will show.

seir

TP-Oreilly wrote: »

I know this is an old discussion so you all probably know, they may be hiding because you all have "show end result on/off toggle" switched on, if you turn it off the vertices will show.

Sorry for digging old topic but I tried everything and this one helped me.

Quack!

This happens to me all the time. The solution for me is to always click in an ortho view, then click into perspective view, they come back in the perspective view.


/old

Justin

I've had a problem similar to this but haven't found a way to fix it besides closing and re-opening. But in my case, some verts would show up where they were supposed to, while others would appear in a cluster off in space. Strangely, the verts off in space could not be selected where they appeared, but by clicking position where they should be appearing on the object would still highlight them. Odd.

Will Faucher

I just reset x-forms, collapse, and bam. Vertices are back.

Racer445

so, what graphics card does everyone with this issue have? i'm on ATI (4870) and getting this issue, and i'm thinking it could very well be yet another ATI bug.

Will Faucher

You can always simply copy the modifier, delete it, reset xforms, and then paste it back on. This preserves your skin, projection, etc.

kurt_hectic

In my case, on ATI raden card I... opened ati panel, disable one monitor, change resolution, change to clone mode ect. and after that back to the standard, dual screen option witch normal resolutions. After that, finally I can see my vertices.

Justin

I'm having a similar problem, but I can't even select the vertices by clicking and dragging where they should be. Oddly, I get one vertex that shows up and allows me to select it. I know the other vertices are there because I can select all the faces and then go to vertex mode, but that doesn't help when trying to modify certain vertices. I've tried collapsing stacks, changing vert size, unhide all, closing and re-opening file; all to no avail. Anyone else have a similar issue?

Jessica Dinh

Perhaps try saving your object and opening it up in a new scene? Try saving it out as a max file first, and if that doesn't work, try obj. maybe?

THE 5

For that "normal case" that they went to 1pxl I usualy do 2x Alt+W. (In Max 2010 that is...)
Maximise Viewport, minimize aggain, or vice versa.

Also: ATI 5500 HD

disanski

Not sure if it is mentioned already but for me it works if I just add edit poly modifiere on top they show up again. I seen this happen on nvidia as well.

Phil101

I would have thought a company that charges such crazy prices for its software would have fixed this issues already. Its nothing major but it is still annoying.

WarrenM

Max has a lot of little annoyances that you would think they'd fix ... but they don't.

piorun

Sometimes works clicking on "Unhide All" in Edit Poly Vertex mode.

Justin Meisse

I was having that issue on one model so I went into customize>preferences>viewports and upped the vertices size by one.

SeveredScion

There is another thing that can make the vertices disappear or only display as one pixel--turning on hardware shading in the viewport (I'm using 3ds max 2010). The hotkey to toggle hardware shading on and off is shift+F3. Or right click on the viewport menu in the upper left of the viewport, go to lighting and shadows, then toggle off "enable hardware shading" if it's on. Hopefully this helps some of you.

Also, sometimes if I hide other sub-objects, it hides vertices as well. So if I'm not seeing verts I also go to faces and element sub-object mode and click "unhide all" under "edit geometry" in the stack.

Ruz

or you could just click on a different viewport then click back on yours. this fixes it\like what Quack said:)

mauzr

i had the same problem, and the only solution i found is this one http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/autodesk-3ds-max--3ds-max-design-2010/quick-fix-found-for-dissapearing-vertices--vertices-not-showing/

cheers!!

Gauranga

No no no! The cause of hidden vertexes is accidental pressing of shortcut Alt+I while you are in subobject vertex level. The solution is simple: go to that level again and just press Alt+U. It is max's feature. When you are on subobj level you can hide (and show) unselected vertexes/faces/objects. Have a nice day friends!

ezili

Tumerboy, it works thanks

sogun

SOLUTION:

All right, if anybody can't find the autodesk link or "nothing works", here is how you get the damn vertices showing in Max:

If you are using and NVIDIA card: (ATI users just try copy/follow/select the features)

Problem is how NVIDIA translates DirectX features - they are always RE-INVENTING and re-fixing a DirectX display, that worked before perfectly... - and how Max uses them by default.

Go to NVIDIA Control Panel (right click) find Manage 3D Settings, Program Settings, Add, find and select the appropriate 3DSMAX.EXE

Go to features:

Set Aniso filtering 16x or highest

Set All Antialiasing OFF

Max pre-render frames: 1

Single Display Perf. mode (or experiment)

Texture filtering Aniso OFF

Negative LOD CLamp

Texture Filtering High Quality

Trilinear OFF

Threaded OFF (or ON experiment)

Triple buff OFF

VSYNC OFF


Start Max: in Viewport Parameters now you can select Show vertices as Dots it works or have it as not so easily visible ticks.

NVIDIA driver: 320.18 but it should work with all drivers.

sogun

Still vertices were appearing and disappearing, seemingly on a whim, then I discovered that pressing my Maximize Viewport toggle shortcut, all vertices reappeared.

Since then I'm using this fix coupled with above config.

Mrfred

Happens to me everyday but I can fix it easily...
Press windows key + d minimise max
Then windows key + L lock session then unlock

Tadaaa verts are back... Silly max and his jerky viewport

Sogun: ill try your olution next time it happens

Mrfred

edit: alt+w 2times fix the issue as well :P thanks sogun

elenasakura

I had a problem with vertices not showing up whenever I tried to go into vertex mode on an editable poly. It would show on other objects, but not on this one. So I exported the object as a .obj, imported it back into the project, and then vertices were showing up correctly.

rosenand

This thread popped up in google, only Gauranga's solution worked for me, go to vertex mode and press Left Alt + U. Seems to be a feature indeed, not a bug (although I don't recall pressing Alt + I, but I was hiding/unhiding polys).

thomasp

there's definitely more than one issue being discussed in this thread. hidden vertices on a mesh are one thing and an unwanted side effect of features in max.
but an entirely different problem and the one that started this thread is that vertices sometimes turn 1-pixel-small, making them hard to see and near impossible to select. i think they may have caught that one in some later release though. haven't seen it in years.

getNerdGoCode

Gauranga said:

No no no! The cause of hidden vertexes is accidental pressing of shortcut Alt+I while you are in subobject vertex level. The solution is simple: go to that level again and just press Alt+U. It is max's feature. When you are on subobj level you can hide (and show) unselected vertexes/faces/objects. Have a nice day friends!

OMG, You are my HERO!!!!! How can I ever repay you for this! I have been dealing with this for quite a while!!!! You have brought me peace!

Circulation_Habits

I hit Alt+W on the keyboard twice and that fixed it for me!!!