3DSMax 2010 Help Please.

shinobix

Hey Guys,
I just started using 2010, and one thing that I'm having troubles with is my materials. For some reason, when I make a change to my texture in photoshop, its not automatically updating in Max... I've been having to go into the bitmap parameters, click on the bitmap tab and re-apply my texture manually so far... I've looked around for a solution, but its escaping me at the moment. What am I missing? I never had this problem in 2008 and 2009...
Any help would be appreciated!

Cheers.

TheBat

I realized that as well yesterday. Quick workaround i found was just opening and closing the materials editor by pressing "m". This refreshed my texture.

Hope this workaround works for you as well.

Cheers!

Yozora

I've always had this problem from what I can remember, the "solution" was to keep the material editor open, but minimized, and to be within the bitmap slot that gets updated.

For example if you have a wall that uses material #1, and material #1 has a texture called "wall.tga" in it's diffuse slot, then you'll need to be in the "wall.tga" level.

This is a pretty crappy workaround since it only works for 1 texture at a time, so each time you want to work on another texture in the scene you'll have to navigate to that material's diffuse slot to keep it updating automatically.


TheBat's solution also works, I used to do that all the time but eventually got annoyed at going from photoshop to max and then pressing m.... and then back to photoshop. Now I can stay in photoshop and see max update the texture on my other monitor, saves a bit of time and hassle. If you don't have a 2nd monitor; then get one

shinobix

Thanks guys,
I'll give those tips a go!

Yozora,
yes I have a second monitor Going to peoples houses where they only have one monitor creeps me out man...

MoP

This seems to be a bug introduced in version 2010 (or maybe 2009?). I never had this issue on Max 2008, and now I do even though the "always update textures on change" option is turned on in the settings.

Right pain in the arse. This was one of the nicest things about Max when texturing, and someone's gone and broken it...

shinobix

MoP...
Its very annoying... Is there a service pack for 2010 yet? Maybe it'll get fixed in that??? We should send Autodesk a bunch of emails haha.

Mark Dygert

There is a service pack for 2010 along with some other misc updates.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/index?siteID=123112&id=2334435&linkID=9241178

But it doesn't take care of this issue. I've had it working quite a few times and it always seems to stop at some point.

I notice its part of a series of gradual steps that seem to bring max to its knees. First it stops updating textures, then the scene degrades quickly when scrubbing the animation bar. Then textures fail to display all together. Then slowness and possibly a scene crash. Normally restarting gets around this but I've only had this problem in 2010. Restarting Max almost always clears up the performance issues and resets everything. Garbage collection doesn't seem to do much only a full restart.

I also think it might have something to do with the shader complexity and the size of the map. Sometimes it just takes a few seconds of sitting there before it pops. I think if you interrupt it while its updating it will stop updating. So I normally activate max and let it sit for a second or two before doing much else, really kind of frustrating.

shinobix

Hey Vig,
I've just got a standard blinn shader goin on, nothing special. Simple 1024x1024 diffuse map on it... and yeah... no update. I was having this problem last night, then I shut my computer down, went to bed, got back to work today only to have the same issues... I miss 2008 haha.

renderhjs

and I thought this was something I had to implement in TexTools because I thought the max solution would not work reliable.
Annoyed me as well, especially if you work close with PS and max.

shinobix

Yeah. I remember Maya not updating the materials... Which made me glad to switch over to max in that regard... Now its the same... blaaaaah...

Lonewolf

i just keep the material editor open

it works

Jet_Pilot

I noticed if im working in photoshop and i save the psd first and then save it as a dds or png that max won't update. Im not sure if your saving it liek this but i try and save out the file i need first THEN save my psd.

shinobix

I just noticed,
Its updating in my material editor, but not in the viewport. So strange. Does anyone know if using someone elses shaders would work? I thought switching it to a directX shader might help. Not so.

apocalypse

This may work. Go into your material editor then click Options>Options
Then tick "Progressive Refinement".