3ds Max - Shaded Faces

leechdemon

I'm either going crazy, or Max isn't behaving the same way anymore. i'm thinking I changed a setting or something without noticing it. Anyways, selected faces used to be shaded in Editable Poly (F2), but lately they're only showing up as Shaded when I'm in wireframe view. They're turning Red when I select them, but just the selected wireframes; not the face itself.

I'm running 2010, in Editable Poly with a Symmetry/Turbosmooth above me in the stack, and Show End Results doesn't seem to make a difference. What button am I looking for?

... Or am I crazy, and it's always been like that?

Mark Dygert

Did you recently install a newer version of 3dsmax? I've run into some preference/settings issues with older versions of max, when I installed new versions of max.

I've also run into shading issues similar to what you're describing when I jump up to newer versions then save it out as 2011-10 compatible, haven't figured out how to force it back the way it was, adjusting the settings doesn't change much or if I maximize the viewport and shrink it back down it resets to its "new default" for that scene. I haven't tried merging it into a new scene, so you might want to try that...

leechdemon

No, been on 2010 for awhole now. I did notice that when I created a new object I got shaded faces again, so I'm thinking it's something object-related. Not sure what though. Suppose I could attach it to a Box or something and see if that fixes it... just annoying.

leechdemon

Huh. No Object properties are different, it doesn't revert when I apply a material.. but for some reason, attaching my current mesh to a converted Box changes the settings on the box.

I converted a box to Editable Poly, applied a UVW Mapping modifier to it, then collapsed; the polys are no longer shaded. Whatever setting causes this has something to do with UV Coords, as far as I can tell. Which doesn't really make any sense, since Boxes should have UV's already.

Wtf?

GeeDave

I'm pretty sure the red-face-selection doesn't work with DirectX shaders (at-least it never has for me)... are you using any on your object?

ParoXum

I often had that issue when turning on the hardware viewport / fx materials with SSAO etc. But yeah, doesn't seem of any help with your latest information.

leechdemon

I'm using a Hardware Viewport material with the Direct3D Viewport Engine. I applied the material to a box, converted to Editable Poly, and I still get the shaded faces.

GeeDave, are you talking about a DirectX shader, as far as the materials go? Or just the hardware shading?

Rick_D

try applying a default lambert and see if the problem persists.

leechdemon

perna wrote: »

I suppose you already tried this?

actionMan.executeAction 0 "371" -- Tools: Shade Selected Faces Toggle

This just returns "True" when I run it, even multiple times. /shrug. I'm on a laptop today and my FKeys aren't working, but I'm assuming this is what F2 is normally bound to?

Rick_D wrote: »

try applying a default lambert and see if the problem persists.

In starting to change the material options, I applied a standard material and the problem went away. I reapplied my original material, and the problem came back. I turned off Hardware Shading, the problem was still there. When I set it to Software Shading (still off), the problem went away. So apparently Hardware Shading, whether active or inactive, gets in the way of shaded faces. Sounds like ParoXum is king of the lab.

Thanks all! That was starting to really bother me.

Sonnhalter

I always thought I was just hitting a hotkey somehow. why don't you just turn it back on in the viewport?

leechdemon

You're correct, "Shade Selected Faces" is bound to the F2 hotkey by default. My problem was that, even with this box checked, the faces won't shade if using a Hardware Shading preview with the D3D viewport engine.

PhilG

I just started getting the same problem. It was since I changed the units setup to that of another file. Going to try loading an old file see if it does the same.

Some objects shade correctly when selecting faces, but others don't

The problem is pressing F2 does not turn the shading on and off unless in wireframe mode. Even doing so through configure viewport.

I will ask the lecturers when I see them and if we solve it I will post here, unless it gets solved in the meantime.

PhilG

I found the solution. It appears that the smoothing groups went wrong. Select all the objects faces, then in the modify panel/smoothing groups select clear all and click autosmooth. You can change the groups after but this appears to bring it back. It is possible that loading from another file with a different scale effected it, but this work around hopefully will solve your problem Strangly it only effected the low poly not the high one?!?

PhilG

Correction, it worked then tried it on another part of the model and the last one reverted back to the same problem.....

PhilG

Oh wait that's got it, it worked this time.... I just love 3ds max... Anyway give it a go. Also I think it might help to reset Xforms first. That's what I did different.

PhilG

OK i've been looking at it a bit more.. goto wait for the other posts to be moderated before this one so you might get a burst of wrong answers as I tried to find the solution which haven't gone through the system yet. First time on here ya see ^_^ OK... I noticed I had the problem after trying to adopt another files unit scale, I did say the smoothing groups thing worked but I was in error. Hopefully this other idea works. Go into wireframe, select all the polygons on your model and go back to shaded view, on mine I saw a glaring hole in the object. Apparently it had split the vertices for some reason on the upscale when changing from feet to inches, and after I had re-welded them together the F2 button worked again in shaded mode. Give it a try though not making any promises. Now just to find the vertices in my model and weld them, oh joy...

glottis8

Did you find a solution for this?

I just had this issue with a co worker and it got fixed by disabling Hardware rendering on the viewport.