Max 7 - Noise Maps Stop Appearing in Renders

[DGWilliams]

Ok, so this is the most annoying thing ever for anyone who relies upon noise maps for texturing.

This problem has occurred on two separate occasions.

Previously, upon importing a mesh made from another program I have been unable to get any kind of noise mesh to appear upon rendering. It will show up in the viewport using the Show Map in Viewport option, but other than that, it will not appear whatsoever. Collapsing the mesh has no effect. Creating new geometry in the same scene and trying to apply a noise mesh to it yields the same results.

In the most recent instance, I'd been working on this mesh and it crashed once or twice while replacing a fall-off sub-map. Now, the mesh suffers from the same noise problems as mentioned above. In addition to trying those things mentioned above, I reset and started a scene with a box, applied a noise mesh, rendered it to make sure it was working. It was. Then, I imported the mesh and tried to apply a noise map again, nothing on the originally affected mesh, but, but...the noise would still appear on the box I started off with in the scene. Then I tried creating a new box and applied a noise map to it: Nothing.

So...there it is. Any thoughts?

[Melak]

Hmm. Try creating a box, merging the scene that's not working anymore, and attaching the object(s) to the box, then delete the box's polygons so you end up with your original objects, this can help with corrupted objects sometimes.
Or maybe the UV mapping's been somehow damaged, try applying a box UV or something just to see if it does anything.

[iOSYS]

I don't think UVW settings affects noise maps, but you might still try. One thing, although it might have been implied when you said you collapsed the stacks, try converting to editably poly, setting to polygon mode, and deselecting all faces. I've had trouble sometimes, when you have faces selected, but are not in face select mode, or even edit poly, and max tries to apply it only to the selected ones. It used to crash my copy of max 5 all the time.

Aside from that, it sounds very odd indeed. I'll let you know if I think of anything else.

[DGWilliams]

Originally Posted by Melak

Hmm. Try creating a box, merging the scene that's not working anymore, and attaching the object(s) to the box, then delete the box's polygons so you end up with your original objects, this can help with corrupted objects sometimes.

By attach, do you mean to collapse the box and the original mesh into a new mesh? If so, this didn't work.

Or maybe the UV mapping's been somehow damaged, try applying a box UV or something just to see if it does anything.

No effect.

Originally Posted by iOSYS

One thing, although it might have been implied when you said you collapsed the stacks, try converting to editably poly, setting to polygon mode, and deselecting all faces. I've had trouble sometimes, when you have faces selected, but are not in face select mode, or even edit poly, and max tries to apply it only to the selected ones. It used to crash my copy of max 5 all the time.

I didn't try converting to editable poly, no. I typically go the Utilities>Collapse>Editable Mesh route. But, trying editable poly didn't yield any results either. No polygon's selected, all polygon's selected, one polygon selected...didn't make a difference.

Originally Posted by iOSYS

Aside from that, it sounds very odd indeed. I'll let you know if I think of anything else.

What gets me is that, as mentioned previously, the mesh seems to corrupt whatever scene it's pulled into, such that any new geometry that's created afterward suffers the same fate.

[Melak]

Hm. By attaching I meant collapse the box (created before importing/merging scenes) to editable poly, then use the attach function to merge the corrupt mesh into the box. Then delete the polygons of the box. Don't have any other ideas

[spudmonkey]

Maybe attach a scene here with the object in it so that we can have a direct look at it. Might be something silly like an inherited setting or it could be a corrupt object as you say

[DGWilliams]

Originally Posted by Melak

Hm. By attaching I meant collapse the box (created before importing/merging scenes) to editable poly, then use the attach function to merge the corrupt mesh into the box. Then delete the polygons of the box. Don't have any other ideas

Went back and tried it that way. No luck.


Here's a copy of the scene: http://www.newcapequest.com/ncq/inde...ownload&id=176

[Howard Day]

Heh. You had me curious for a second there.
Your scale on the noise is too big. You can't rely on the viewport display to show you how big the noise will be on your object. Set the noise scale to 1 instead of 60. Problem solved. If you're interested, the reason the Viewport doesn't match the render in this case is because the Noise material is a 3d shader - and the viewport can only use UVs - it cannot display 3d textures, only 2d ones. So it makes an attempt to show you what it will look like, but fails pretty utterly.

[DGWilliams]

...you know, I could have sworn I tried that. Well, now I feel very, very stupid. ...and a little irritated with the way scaling works in 3dsmax.

Thanks a bunch!