3ds Max Material Missing
Cori Lenon
If I relink the textures and open up the file, the texture will be there again. See attached some screen grabs, as you can see sometimes only one of the maps is missing but usually it's both, and sometimes none. Does Enscape have a function like V-ray where you can check that all maps are linked with the model? Or do I have to check each one each time?
henrybenchmark , even if you do not open your project(s) in a while, the textures should still remain linked - only if you move them around on your machine they will have to be relinked again at the moment. There is, right now, no direct procedure to re-link all materials at once for example, so I recommend keeping the textures in one specific place on your hard drive.
Hi Demian Gutberlet , I sent you an email the other day so hopefully you can respond to that but through i would hit you up in here as well. I am having issues and not sure on what you would recommend as correct workflow. I have create material libraries over the past year whilst working from home. These were created on a portable hardrive so only worked with my computer. I have now transfered these to the server which is located in the offce so the other can access and use. We have gone through each material and relinked the maps to each one (very time consuming). I am still working from home 4 out of 5 days a week. I have access to the server from home, but when I try to use the material which were relinked in the office, the maps are missing again.
What I need to know is how is a company meant to set up their material libraries so that multiple people in different location can work on models together. This is putting a big problem into our workflow and i'm sure there must be a solution, but i can't find one?
Not sure if this is the place to post this or not, But on a couple of worlds I get some sections that show up as missing material on my screen. Any thought on how to fix this? I have seen it on Coursaunt and now on Balmora.
2) One or more game files (or parts of them) are missing. This is probably the case if you get an error message saying some data file or other is "missing" when you travel somewhere (or if you just have big blank spaces where the planet surface or whatever should be). To fis this, you need to run a repair.
the materials are on you're hard drive in the program files or program files (x86) autodesk 3ds max and then location the material libraries all the maps are there, they are going to limited because you have the student version, you don't get all the maps until you buy the full version
I'd like to help with this issue regarding missing material libraries. Do you have any special characters in your Windows username? There is a problem when people have special characters in their Windows username that can cause this issue. If you're sure you've installed them, then it's likely this username issue. Special characters are characters such as these: , , Œ, , etc. You can try to load your .mpl file from outside of your user folder and that often works for usernames with special characters. More information here.
No problem, I have unmarked the post. It is not true that the student version gives fewer materials, so that isn't the issue either. Can you please post a screenshot of what your map browser looks like for me? Is it just straight empty or what exactly are you seeing? What is your current renderer? Are you missing all maps in your browser or is it simply the Autodesk Materials that are missing? (They only show up if the current renderer is supported, so maybe changing renderers would help there.) Thanks for the information and for a screenshot!
Hi. I'm very new to the newer versions of 3dx Max (last one i worked with
was 3ds Max 4!) so I hope you'll forgive me for not fully understanding
what you are asking me to do. I've attached a screenshot of my slate view,
with an example Arch and Design template to show the problem that I'm
having. I've ringed where, for this concrete material, the map is missing.
This is using the Mental Ray renderer. I run into this problem constantly
when trying to use materials.
Perhaps there is something I'm missing or doing wrong? I can't seem to find
a single folder that contains any default maps for 3ds Max anywhere on my HD
Hi. sorry about this. Reading back through my posts in this thread, it appears that I was in error describing my original problem as having no Material Libraries. It seems I have 3 Material Libraries (Is this all we get now? I remember there used to be quite a few with the older versions). The problem is actually missing maps. In my previous post is one example, here is another. This one is a Banyan tree map from the Nature MatLib. As you can see, where there should be a bitmap there is just a black square, and also, just a set of unmapped generic colours for the rest of the material.
Perhaps my understanding of how materials work in the new versions of Max is wrong? I remember being able to map, bricks, concrete, wood, heck, flowers even, to objects in a few seconds with just a couple of clicks of the mouse.
Thank you for the clarification, this helps considerably. I do have 4 material libraries in my installation located at C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2017\materiallibraries. There used to be a lot more of them but many got made into presets instead. (For example, create an Architectural material and it has a bunch of presets in the drop down menu.) Others were removed because the scanline renderer isn't really used as much as raytraced renderers.
On to your issue. The reason those map slots are black are almost definitely because the pathing is incorrect and it's not loading the map. What I would do is go to File/Green button-> References -> Asset Tracking. From there look for paths that show "File Missing" as the status. From there you can select multiple entries on the list and right click to use "Set Path" to link them to a new location. Or, you can do them 1 by 1 with "Browse".
Or, you can select the black square as noted in your post above, and double click it to bring up the bitmap properties dialog on the right side. From there you can use the path button to get to where the map is located. Keep in mind that you don't have to use this new Slate editor, if you prefer the older material editor you can go back to it as shown below.
Hi Alfred. I finally located the missing maps. I'm not sure i fully understand what has happened but they are sitting nicely there in my C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2016\maps folder. A folder I have looked in (while looking for my maps) at least 10 times and found it to be empty! Your advice helped me to reach this point however, and I thank you for it
ps, can you explain what the image you uploaded represents please? it doesn't match anything I've yet seen in my version of Max.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Tim. I have some other sections in the same group where the two surfaces definitely don't intersect (for instance, where the design surface doesn't reach the original ground) and it still drew the material on those sections, so I'm thinking it's something else, at least in my particular case. I continued to search online after I posted this, and I found a comment that said it could possibly be the sample lines, and you can find out by moving them. So I moved one of them 1m along the alignment and the material appeared in the section. I had 18 sections with no material so I began moving each of them and I found that some had to be moved down-chainage to make it work (most of them appeared when I moved them up-chainage). Also, the quantities appeared in the table. I honestly have no idea why this worked, but it saved me from drawing 18 areas manually and calculating the volumes, so I'm very happy with this. It only took 5 mins. to move the 18 sample lines, so at least it's a timely solution.
Thanks for posting your question and feedback. I can confirm that this is still being researched by the development team. I worked on similar issues before and what I found was if there was a boundary added to the surface, it may cause some materials to not show up, and the way around this was to edit the surface near the cross section where it's not showing the material.
I got the materials to appear by moving the sample lines by 1 meter along the alignment, which allowed me to get my tender quantities out on time, but I realize that it's just a workaround, and I haven't solved the problem yet. You are correct about the boundaries, as I put them on all my surfaces. We share surfaces by XML in our department, so if I don't add a boundary it regenerates and makes all the long triangles again. Now that the contract tender has gone out, I have time to play around with this a bit more, so I will try your method on my original drawing to see if it fixes the issue.
I tried all of these methods and moving the section lines did indeed work. Interestingly, shortening the sample line width also worked. The triangle swap didn't do anything but adding points around the problem area did. My original surface did have a hide boundary but the problem persisted after removing them. I'll attach the file if anyone wants to reference it.
Regarding intersection and closed boundaries: Can someone tell me why intersections and closed boundaries get brought up as a reason for these types of errors? As far as I can tell, Civil 3D seems fairly robust and doesn't require closed boundaries when calculating materials using earthworks material calculations. I did some cursory tests (admittedly small triangle counts) and my cross sections handled fine with open/closed, intersecting/not, and surfaces with holes (file attached).
Hello Wendy @lim.wendy,
Is it possible to get an email notification when a future update solves this issue? I would like to know when to bother our IT department for an upgrade Thank you for your help.
I agree with your comments about the boundaries. I can't see what that would have to do with whether the materials are displayed or not. Usually, wherever a surface ends, like where you don't have quite enough surface to cover, the program just draws a line there and displays the material, it doesn't need the surfaces to close. In any event, the development team seems to be working on it. Have a good one.