Unable to see Bump Maps in the View Port (3ds Max 2014)

[Anonymous]

Hey folks, i have a problem. At my home desktop computer, i am unable to see bump textures in my viewport. When i render the model, i can see it, but i need to see it in the viewport, too.

I've already ticked "show in viewport" in the material editor, and in the viewport, i use shaded view, going to materials -> show realistic materials with maps (or any other option in that menu) doesn't do anything for me .
I've tried changing to Nitrous Direct 3D 9, instead of 11, but sadly that doesn't help, too.

What confuses me even more is the fact, that on my Laptop everything works just fine. I apply a bump map on a standard blinn material, apply the material to the object, tick "show realistic materials with maps" and i can see the bump map in the viewport. The only thing i noticed was a massive fps drop, from around 250 - 300 to 35 - 50, is this normal? Both Computers are running with Windows 8.1 and have the newest avaiable drivers. My Laptop has a Geforce GT 650 M, my home computer a Nvidia Geforce 570 GTX. I even compared the settings from my laptop to those on my home computer, side by side, and they are exactly the same, so i don't understand why this isn't working.

I am using 3ds Max 2014 on both systems, though on my home desktop i have SP 3 and on my Laptop SP 2.I've done a clean install of 3ds Max 2014 and not installing SP 3 on my home desktop computer didn't help.

In the picture i've attached, you can see how i am unable to view bump maps in the viewport even though the value is set to 81 and "show realistic material in viewport" is ticked on.

Slowly i am starting to get really frustrated with this problem, because i've done a lot of research on the internet, but sadly to no avail. I even posted this problem on the Digital Tutors Forums, but as of now they were unfortunately unable to help me. I' ve already tried the search option on this forum and found some similar problems that, sadly, weren't solved, too.

 €: The second picture is how it is looking like on my laptop. As you can see everything works alright and i am able to see the bump map in the viewport. This is how it should be on my home computer, too, but it doesn't work for some reason.

[Steve_Curley]

That's not really a fair comparison - you need to take the scene from work and test it at home, and the scene from home and test it at work.

When you say a "clean install" did you remove ALL Max 2014 folders, especially under Users, before reinstalling? If not then it's not "clean" and any configuration issues will persist (those files are not removed (by uninstalling) or overwritten (when re-installing)).

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your answer! I've sent the file from my laptop to my home computer, but as you can see in the attached picture, there is still no visible bump in the viewport.

About that clean install. You could be onto something there, because iirc i just uninstalled it through software -> uninstall. Will definitely hunt down all folders today and remove it completely and then try again. But that has to wait a little, though, because it is 2:20 AM over here and i need to get some sleep

I will try it out and then report if it worked out.

€: the bump value in the attached picture is 81, the same as in the other pictures.

I'll try out the home scene with the space ship at my laptop later on, too.

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

Uninstall. Remove the original installation folder plus those under Users. In fact try removing just those under Users first - that may be all that is required. Max will just re-create them with default settings.

[Anonymous]

Oh man thank you, that did it! As of now i am able to see the bump map in the same scene that was used in my laptop, will try the other scenes now. This problem haunted me for nearly a month and it was so easy to resolve, oh my god. Thanks a 1000times already!

€: Yep, seems to work as intended right now, thank you so much. I feel like a jack ****, because in the end, the solution was sooo simple

[Steve_Curley]

Glad it helped. Would be nice to know what caused it though - corruption of the config files or just some odd setting which got changed (probably inadvertantly).

[Anonymous]

Yes, i would really like to know the exact cause of that problem, but we'll probably never know . Just glad that it works now, feeling really motivated because of this . This topic can be marked as solved, i guess.