[zak]

yeah, when i go into the material and i select an image of some sort for the material, its supposed to put it around the sphere in the box withthe nice lighting effect an everything, but what it does for me is fill the whole box with the image. so if i choose bricks for example, the little box with the sphere just fills up with the bricks image. no sphere or nothing, and i cant apply the material?! this is really confusing, has anyone had this or knows how to deal with it

[HawkOne]

Not sure what you're seeing, or what version of Max you're using, but here goes ...

It sounds like you're confusing the Material Editor with the Material/Map Browser ...



you will get the 3D sample view in the editor only, before you get it there you have to assign it to one of those texture placeholders in the editor ...

To do that you need to choose one of those spheres in the Editor window so that it is highlighted and then scroll down to the Maps-list, then you click the Diffuse Color button and the Material/Map Browser pops up.

Go ahead and choose your bricks texture and click ok, the texture you chose will appear in the Editor wrapped around the sample sphere or whatever object you have chosen as your sample type.(sphere,cylinder,cube) in the top right button-list of the Editor.

If that is not what is happening on your system, make a screen capture and show what is happening ...

Cheers ...

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: HawkOne ]

[edraket]

The row of buttons under the slots...click the third one from the right.
It toggles "show end result" on and off.

[zak]

sorry i couldnt post some screendumpd before, it was on a different comp, but yeah thats what im seeing. i dont think im confusing anything, its just the spheres dissapear and i get whatever texture i choose.
here is what happens:



ps. how do i do that funky black interface btw ^__^

[ June 03, 2002: Message edited by: zak ]

[zak]

hasnt anyone got a clue what might be wrong or how i might fix this? cause i cant really use max for much of anything like this

[Ian Jones]

hmm, I am a total newb to MAX 4 (since last night) and I had the same problems, but thats prob just cos I don't know what I'm doing...

Since we're on the topic of 3dmax... Hope you guys don't mind.

I'm having trouble doing a boolean union between splines. It worked when I combined a large rectangle with a few circles, but when I try to combine that shape with these other splines (which had a boolean subtract applied earlier), it doesn't work. Even when the union symbol shows up and I try it, it says in that status bar something about a spline-intersection. I even did the 'check shape' utility to find out more about that intersection error, but I'm still stuck. The splines are all the same name in the modify tab, they were created with 'new shape' UN-checked.

Anyone know how to fix those pesky intersection errors...?

[Strawberrysauce]

yo, it looks as if your still not applying the bitmap texture as a subsection of the standard texture, eg DIFFUSE, BUMP etc

instead it looks as if your simply choosing a bitmap to completely replace the original texture.

re-read HawkOne's post.

- and sorry if i got it wrong

[Tendril]

Ok, in max there are materials and there are maps.

in the material/map browser the materials are the ones with the little blue sphere next to theyre name. maps have the green sqewy thing.

materials are what you apply to objects. maps are what you use to give materials properties - eg. diffuse colour.

So you need to create a standard material(double click on the standard with the blue sphere) Then have a look for its diffuse color slot - double click on thatm and now chose your map.

Ian- max's boolean is unpredictable.
I'm not sure if this wil suffice, but select one spline and use attach in its properties to add the others.
That may be all you want to do.
I think if you look in the modify panel splines have their own boolean, but i havent used it.

hope that helps.

[HawkOne]

Hello again ...

@ zak:...
... after seeing your screenshots I can see what your problem is ...



As you can see from the image above, as shamhead also pointed out, there is a difference in what happens when using the "Get Material" button, compared to using the "Diffuse Color" button in the Maps area to assign textures. What you want to do is the latter.

As for the colors of the UI, that is changed simply by going to the Customize -> Customize User Interface on the file menu, then in the Colors tab of the following pop-up window, find the section called Scheme.
Where it says Use Standard Windows Colors, change it to custom and choose one of the schemes in the list below. My setting is 3D Dark Shadow.

@ Ian:...

Ian, again it is hard to imagine what exactly you are trying to achieve without some descriptive images , but I'll give it a shot, maybe you can try to create a copy of your booleaned object with the combined rectangle and circle, then you flatten/freeze those shapes in the modifier stack before you try using boolean again to add those new spline shapes.

Just a tip, when making complex splineshapes, it is usually done in a vector package such as Illustrator or any other software that can export splineshapes as .ai files. It is so much easier to create the splines in a software designed for vectorgraphics. Make sure you save or export the .ai file as a version AI88 Illustrator file, since the later versions are not accepted by the Max import filter.

Cheers ...

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: HawkOne ]

[zak]

yay it worked ^__^ thanks everyone again.
@hawkone thanks for the ui thing ill also try to remember the illustrator tip.

cheers evryone. anyone else got any tips / problems / solutions to problems?

[zak]

im gonna try that. thanks alot for the responses. but on a side note, for some reason i could apply maps withgout doing all that before, so this is quite strange. anyway thanks again, and if you had/ have a problem in max, post it here, maybe we can get a troubleshoot thread going for newbies like me ^__^