Max ligthing weirdness - WTF man?

Jedilaw

Continuing with the modeling of my ISD, all of the sudden Max decides to start giving me results like this with the skylight and global illumination. It's like half of the model has become...blurred. Or overexposed, actually. I shut Max down and tried opening a different model. That rendered fine, including usage of the skylights. Went back to the ISD to try again, same weird, f'ked up result.

Anybody have a clue WTF Max is up to?

[Deleted User]

i noticed that on your latest renders.

are you mirroring the left side?

Jedilaw

Wasn't in the last ones, haven't posted since this cropped up. I'm using mirrored instances of two of the greebles, but I checked the properties on all of the objects they are all supposed to be rendering properly.

AAAAAAARRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! F^%$*g Max!

Coolhand

ive had similar problems in the past, i fixed it somehow. have you tried using the symmetry modifier instead? or you could try making a box, and converting it to editable mesh, then attach the rest of the geometry to it, max might then treat it as a different object.

Larsen

Yeah what CH said... I had something similar with textures, tho I can't remember hwat it was - if I heard it now, O'd say I was lying, but it did happen:(

I swear to god, I just deleted the texture in map editor and redid it... tho I have to admit this looks more like a render issue...

Good luck , I hope you figure it out. Maybe check the camera settings, those can really really screw things up from time to time!

biotech

Have you got auto exposure on?

Jedilaw

Well, I fixed it, but in a very strange way. I went back to the most recent file version that was producing good renders, then I merged in the geometry that had been added into the more recent versions. It can't have been a geometry issue or a modifier issue, because all of the same geometry and modifiers were brought in with the merge, and it rendered fine.

Strangest damned thing I've seen in Max...

Guerrilla

Might've corrupted the file at some point or something. Beats the hell out of me.

Glad it's sorted though.

Wiz

i had a very similar thing, gettin corruption in my render for no good reason, it turned out to be a new material i added to an element within the scene for some reason screwed everything up, removed it and did it again (like Larson said he did) and all was then well....

Very, very bizarre...

Jedilaw

Yeah, I think the materials issue may have been the key, as when I merged the new geometry I had Max apply the scene's materials instead of the merged one. If something happened to the material, I can see that messing up renders. I've just never seen a material do this, and I checked the settings for the messd up file. There was nothing unusual.

LennO

Jedilaw wrote: »

Strangest damned thing I've seen in Max...

Yeah, but happens unfortunately, especially with a large modifier stack. Max has a tendency of accumulating a lot of garbage data in critical situations. A merge usually works as any "blind data" (which can result in effects such as strangely oriented normals, broken or overbright lightsA…etc) gets left behind in the corrupt file. In fact, you can almost always track the problem back to a certain operation/plugin/crash, but general rule of thumb is that merging will fix it, and as long as you haven't lost any data it's all fine. Always keep older versions of you files though, and check your saved files from time to time A– you might find (especially on complex scenes) that max has written out files that cannot be correctly loaded back in, even though it saved just fine. So even if you saved 50 different, numbered versions of you mesh one evening, ALL of those 50 versions CAN be corrupt. Might wanna check every 5-10 versions or so, just to make sure. Now, this can happen to files of ANY app, but max for it's parametrical file format is VERY likely to get hit by bugs and plugin conflicts, plus as they are not human readable you don't have any chance of fixing them yourself.
Note that of all the "containers" stored in such a scene file, not all are evaluated at import/merge (other then file open), therefore corrupt sections in these blocks of the file can be bypassed this way.

Coolhand

it's weird the only time its happened to me is when i've made an instanced mirrored copy woth nothing in the stack! I tend not to work with big stacks anyway, its safer;). glad you fixed it though man.:)

IRML

it actually looks to me just like it's not applying any radiosity to half the model, one half looks correct, but the other half just looks ambiently lit, you're not seeing it over exposed but I think you're just seeing the lack of radiosity shadows on that side

Jedilaw

Coolhand wrote: »

it's weird the only time its happened to me is when i've made an instanced mirrored copy woth nothing in the stack! I tend not to work with big stacks anyway, its safer;). glad you fixed it though man.:)

That was exactly what I was working with, an instanced mirrored copy with no modifiers, not even automatic smoothing.

@IRML: I agree, it looks like the messed up side of the image wasn't undergoing any radiosity calculations.