Display issues- urgent help needed please?

[rebeccamoorekwl]

Hi everyone.

I'm in serious need of help. All of my files look like the image attached when zoomed out. Also geometry disappears when I click anywhere. I don't know how to describe what is happening but you can sometimes see behind some solids to what is behind, or strange coloured shapes like broken shadows or extra triangles all over the model. It just looks totally broken. The model in the picture is imported from Revit but I get the same problems with just a cube I make myself. I keep changing the graphics driver as it solves some other problems I'm having. However, this problem is not resolved on changing the graphics driver. I used 3ds Max in Uni 4 years ago with no problems. Maybe this is something in my set up or perhaps something I have forgotten in my 4 years working on Modo. Really really need to get this sorted so please, any advice- even if it doesn't work- will be so very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Becky

[Steve_Curley]

Does it render correctly? That's the more important question.
As for the artifacts, System Units and the size of the objects, or "scene scale". Also the distance from the origin can affect the scene (usually badly). It's basically Z-fighting - faces which are close to each other in reality appear coincident the further they are from the camera. The renderer gets confused which which face to render and the result is weird artifacts.
You shouldn't get that problem in a new scene IF the objects are the correct size with respect to the System Units and they are close to the origin. If you do then something is wrong somewhere - zipping and posting such a (test) scene may help us work out what it is.

[rebeccamoorekwl]

Thankyou very much for your reply. It does seem to render fine (only tried something quickly because it kept crashing) but it's really hard on the eyes when trying to model, does slow things down quite a lot. I guess it's more annoying that I know something is wrong and not being able to fix it rather than not being able to work on it. It's at the right scale and modelled at the origin. I tried to attach a teeny tiny part of the model zipped but it was 28mb. Will get back on the case tomorrow to see if I can get it to a decent size to send it to you, would really appreciate your help on it. 

Thanks very much, Becky

[Steve_Curley]

Which scale though? a 1M cube is to scale at 1000mm, 1M, .001KM, assuming the SU are mm/M/KM respectively, but I can (almost) guarantee you'll have issues at .001KM because Max really doesn't like distances that small. Post something representative when you get chance - it may be everything is "correct" and there's not much you can do apart from some serious scene management (putting stuff onto Layers so you easily hide/show them while you're working). 7 million polys is a big scene - I'm not surprised you're only getting 0.34 FPS - hiding a lot of it will help with that considerably.

[schaefer]

try to activate viewport clipping and an pull the near slider just a bit.

it happens with large scale scenes.

Maybe it works.

[rebeccamoorekwl]

Schaefer - thanks I will try that now and see what I get.

Steve - 1 unit is 1mm, my scenes are all set to mm. I gave up with that one file because something major in it was screwed. I've attached a scene that shows two boxes the same size as a building I'm about to model. The artifacts(?) aren't as noticeable but are still visible (jagged lines and odd striped darker shades). This may just be how Max is but I would like to know for sure. Please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot!!

[Steve_Curley]

Not sure about "darker shades" - I'm using a Shaded viewport with the Nitrous drivers, you've obiously reverted to the Direct3D drivers. Render the scene - is the result acceptable? If so don't worry about what you see in the viewport.
Jaggies have been the bane of everyone's lives since the first time a line was drawn onscreen. It's basically impossible to have a straight line at an angle without it looking jagged - there are never enough pixels on a monitor to do that. The higher the resolution of the monitor, or more precisely the closer together the monitor pixels are, the better it will look, but it can never be perfect. As above, render it and see what it's like. Bear in mind the renderer will probably antialias against the background, the viewports might not, which makes the jaggies more obvious in the viewports.

[rebeccamoorekwl]

I was having too many problems with the Nitrous Drivers so I switched to Direct 3D. It does render properly so I guess I will just have to deal with it when modelling. I was only concerned because I don't get jagged edges in Modo so I thought perhaps something was wrong in my set up. Thanks a lot for your help, much appreciated!!

[PROH]

Hi. A common error is to set Display Units only - and leaving System Units at default inches, which can cause unforeseen issues. So, just to be absolutely sure about the scale: Are both the System Units and Display Units set to mm?

[Steve_Curley]

Yes, they are. Well, they are in the small scene provided a few posts up - have to assume they are in the original large scene too. I'm not seeing any "real" artifacts of the kind in the original image at any zoom level, but of course it's a minimal test scene.

[CAMedeck]

Something I've encountered that causes the display artifacts like this is an errant object or vertex that is far from the origin.  Especially when dealing with imported CAD work, there can be helpers or *block* objects miles from the origin.  So even if your model is at or near center, that one bit of something in the distance is messing up the math.

I mention vertex because I'd mistakenly created a new vertex on an Editable Poly that created itself a half mile away... Whoops.  🙂

[schaefer · Accepted solution]

I took your "to send" file and tested.

did you try the clipping? At my place it works (look at the picture). 

it is just a trick to help. it is a max display problem. 

as i know it is new in max, but well known in maya.

if i change the system units to cm, it looks better.

[rebeccamoorekwl]

Just rebuilt some of the scene and the clipping works! Amazing. I will also try modelling in cm/ m, in Modo I model in metres so perhaps that's why I don't have issues there. Thanks so much to everyone!