red polygon selection has vanished

[lightpanther]

The normal situation of selected polygons showing in red has disappeared in my scene. The scene is not overly complicated...just modeling with a few chamferboxes.

In "Configure Viewports" SHADE SELECTED FACES is already ticked.

[Anonymous]

Is it applied ot all views?  I'd try disabling and enabling it again, then apply to all views.  If that still doesn't work, it could be a display driver issue.

[lightpanther]

It is applied in all viewports. However, it seems to be in this particular file that I am working on. If I close max, open a new file and do similar stuff, red selection is back again. That isn't much use for the file I'm working in, though. I toggled select faces on and off, but no difference.

[toryschram]

Try F2?

This happens to me when im working with an instanced object and F2 doesn't help.

[CAMedeck]

Do you have another modifier on top?  That can cause the shade selected faces to not work sometimes.  

[lightpanther]

Sort of. I've got an edit poly in the modifier stack above a chamferbox.

[CAMedeck]

Zip the scene and post it here, let us take a look and see if it is something in the scene itself.

I was only wondering if there were any modifiers over the top of the one you were working in.  For instance, if you have an Edit Mesh over an Editable Poly, the Edit Mesh would cancel out the sub-object selection if the Show End Results button is enabled in the modifer tab.

[Hwagner]

F2 will toggle the red fill when selected. make sure you are selectin in sub object, just selecting the object will not turn it red.

[Richard.Vivanco]

F2 or maybe the polygon is inverted.

[lightpanther]

F2 doesn't seem to be the problem. That will change it to red edges selected to indicate polygon selected, but then it toggles back to no indication at all. Yet the polygons are definitely selected, as they can be moved and distorted as necessary.

Another thing is that they do seem to light up by dragging a marquee, but not when clicked on directly.

[Steve_Curley]

As already suggested above - Zip the scene and post it here. Unless someone just "happens" to have seen this before, we need to look at the scene (as it appears to be scene specific) in order to work out why that is happening.

[lightpanther]

I have zipped the file here.

[lightpanther]

I should mention that the problem is happening on the smaller couch cushions, for me.

[Steve_Curley]

A brief look shows a couple of issues with various objects.
The cushions in the LOVESEAT group are duplicated - there are 4 when it looks like there should only be 2.
A number of the objects are (or at least think they are) passing sub-object selections up the stack when they probably shouldn't be. You can tell because there are vertex/edge/polygon symbols to the side of the modifiers in the stack.
At least one (Chamferbox58) not only has a sub-object selection but that selection is a Soft Selection. May be intentional, may not. You'll have to check that yourself.
The basic cause of your polys not showing as selected (if you look closely at the bottom of the Selection Rollout it tells you how many are selected) is because you're activating a Modifier part way down the stack but you have Show End Result turned on. That shows the fully evaluated stack and your selection is not in the top most modifier so it isn't displayed. Turn Show End Result off and you'll see them.

[lightpanther]

Hi Steve. Thanks for taking the time to look at the file. Unfortunately, I am still having the problem. You were right about the cushions duplicated. I didn't spot that. I have removed all of the duplicates of the cushion shown selected here, so that it is the only one remaining and the only object selected. As you can see I'm in polygon mode and I have Show End Result definitely turned off, yet the polygons selected (I selected several) are not showing.

I have a couple of thoughts:

1) The couch is a group and is "open" so that I can access the cushions.

2) the cushions are "instanced."

[Steve_Curley]

Ok, so 2 things. 1 - you're at the top level of the stack so Show End Result shouldn't have any impact, but 2) if you look at the bottom of the stack (as shown in your image) you can see that there's a grey square (polygon) visible to the side of the lower Edit Poly modifier - this means that in the lower Edit Poly Max thinks there is a Polygon Selection to pass up the stack. Go into the lower Edit Poly, Polygon level and make sure nothing is selected. When you exit from that one to the upper one make certain you exit the Polygon level first (click on the Edit Poly) before clicking on the upper Edit Poly to make it active.
Only other sugestion would be to Reset you User Settings. Provided you Copy rather than Delete you can put your old ones back if the precedure doesn't help. Try the other suggestions before this one though.

[lightpanther]

I was not able to get red poly selection with an edit poly sitting as a modifier above the chamferbox primitive. I managed to get them back, as seen in the pic here, by deleting that modifier and *converting* the chamferbox to an edit poly. However, I am thinking that there might be occasions when it could be advantageous to have edit poly as a modifier instead, and anyway, despite following the tutorial I am on, in which he definitely uses an edit poly modifier, his are red whereas mine are not (this happens for me whether or not there are any grey polygons in the display box over on the right).

[Steve_Curley]

Try a simple test in a new, clean scene. That should just work - and it does here every time I try it. The whole idea of modifiers is that you can, if you're careful, change stuff lower down the stack while preserving changes made in the modifier(s). I still recommened you try clearing your settings just in case.

[lightpanther]

Steve:

With show end result turned off, and 3ds max reset as per the instructions on the link you gave me, that does indeed seem to have resolved the problem:

Are there any other consequences I need to worry about for files or projects already partly completed, as a result of resetting the program? Also, could you please remind me where I swap out that dark interface option - I don't like it.

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

You lose any configuration changes you previously made - most things which are specific to the windows User you are logged in as (they are User settings). Existing projects should not be affected as many of the settings become part of the scene file and will override the current settings when you load the scene.
Customize > Load Custom UI Scheme should let you load the ame-light theme. Quick tip. Once you're happy with the UI and any other user settings, close Max and Zip up the entire ENU folder. That way in order to reset you simply delete the contents of the ENU folder and extract the contents of the zip. Saves having to reconfigure it all every time 😉