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Scale in Max

polycounter lvl 11
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leechdemon polycounter lvl 11
Hey, silly question about Max's unit setup. I typically work in Meters, since that's what our engine accepts. My Units setup is "Display Unit Scale: Meters" and "System Unit Scale: 1.0 Meters". Everything saves and exports out correctly, and in-engine it all works out to the correct sizes.

My problem is that max doesn't like working at this size. If I create, say, a Box that is a few inches long, sometimes it'll simply fail to create; I'll drag the box for the first click, and it'll cancel before I can get it to draw a second click. I think what it's doing is say "This box is X size which rounds down to zero... the user messed up". The work-around is that I'll make a much larger primitive and adjust the primitive settings so that it's the size I wanted. This works, but is lame.

Is there a way to fix this within max so that my displayed units are still in meters, but the files still export correctly? The way I understand it, everything relies on System Unit Scale; changing that would fix my error but mess up my exports, AFAIK. The only other solution I can think of is changing it anyways, and adjusting my Scale Factor on export. I'd rather avoid that if I have to.

Anybody know more on this topic?

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  • Runner
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    Hi,

    What values do you have on the " System Units Setup " window?
  • leechdemon
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    leechdemon polycounter lvl 11
    I'm not on my work machine atm, but I believe 1.0 Meters are my System Units; both System and Display are set to Meters.
  • Runner
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    Huum it should work ok

    What values do you have in:

    Origin,
    Distance from Origin,
    Resulting accuracy,
  • leechdemon
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    leechdemon polycounter lvl 11
    Units - 1.0 Meters
    Origin - 16777215.0m
    Distance - 1.0m
    Accuracy - 0.0000001192m

    I didn't tweak any of the settings manually, other than the units themselves; Generic to Meters in Display, and Inches to Meters in System Units. Like I mentioned originally, everything WORKS, but creating small objects causes errors. For example, if you create a sphere numerically, it's possible to create one with a Radius of 0.05m (2 Inches). However, if you try and drag a Sphere that's 0.05m, it won't work; it'll let you try, but when it realizes you want one that small, it cancels. The effect is more dramatic for Boxes, where it won't even let you get to the second step of the draw command before canceling.
  • Runner
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    Hello,

    Yes this is a know issue. I am sorry but i don't have any good tips on it.

    You can either:

    Enter the values for the models manually.

    Make everything "double the size" and re-scale on export.
  • mortalhuman
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    If you work in meters, default generic units should be fine in most cases. Have you tried with completely default settings?
  • leechdemon
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    leechdemon polycounter lvl 11
    If you work in meters, default generic units should be fine in most cases. Have you tried with completely default settings?

    My settings are default, except for both things being set to Meters; I didn't change the accuracy, etc.

    Which unit controls the export scale? If I set it to Generic Units, and change my Display to Meters, will that work?
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