Black dots on models' surface

[3DMechDesigner]

Hello everyone,

Today I noticed that when I move or rotate the camera in the perspective viewport, some strange black dots appear on the surface of any model that doesn't have a material assigned and disappear after 3-4 seconds. I guess my graphic card can't handle very well a program such as 3ds max, because It's a little bit old and outdated, but I don't have any other issues.

Is it normal?

Is there anything I can do?

Thanks in advance.

[Steve_Curley]

That's because you have the Viewport set to Realistic. Switch the Viewport to Shaded and the dots will disappear.

[3DMechDesigner]

OK, thanks a lot!

But why does this happen when realistic view is on?

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

It's how the Nitrous viewports show "realistic" shading - the Help should have further details on it. I tend to leave the viewports on Shaded at least until all the modeling work is done then switch it to Realistic for materials and lighting.

[jhamilton]

I am having a similar issue with the black dots, except I am using the Arnold Rendering engine.  I first thought I had it figured out as coming from a Infraworks .fbx background, but the materials on it have all been switched out and it is still causing stray areas of black dots in different renderings.  I checked and everything has an editable mesh and I can't find any splines to be causing the problem either.  We are using Arnold because it has proved far better quality and much faster rendering time than Mental ray or anything else we have tried.  Mental-ray is ok for a single shot rendering, but we render the frames and assemble them into video footage.  This is getting really frustrating trying to get out decent video footage.