My first dab at modeling in 3ds max

[Anonymous]

So in short this is the first bit of modeling i have done ever. I have no previous experiences in 3d and i am learning at home by myself so things are a little bit trickier.
Anyway I've hit a problem every time i render my model i see a small hole in the mesh yet i can't see the hole in the viewport.
Its probably a really obvious beginner question, so i'm sorry if it already has been asked.

[Brock_Lafond]

The first thing that comes to mind is conflicting internal edges of your polygonal faces.

Turn on Edged Faces (F4 Key) In editable poly, go to Edge subobject mode, and then click on Turn in the Edit Edges panel. You'll see some edges appear. Check around your problematic area and see if there are any edges that are super close to each other.

It could also be a surface normal problem. If you were using the legacy Edit Mesh instead of using Editable Poly, it is possible to weld verts with conflicting normals. Try putting a Normal Modifier on top of the stack and check Unify. You may have to flip the normals if they face the wrong way.

[Anonymous]

Could it be that you somehow flipped a polygon? I mean if it's not realy visible in the viewport...
Go to sub-object -> polygon -> select -> flip

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much it was an easy fix that only took me two minutes

[tim]

If you work with 3d modelling for a period of time, you'll come to secretly enjoy these little glitches. They test your ability to methodically solve problems. One great approach is to exclude possible causes - starting with the most likely and fastest to determine.

In this case I would want to make sure the face isn't flipped (as mentioned by mik64) - you could flip the face or you could just go into the render dialog and tick "Force 2-Sided" (I personally would do the latter because I think it would be faster). When I render I would do a region render so that I'm not rendering parts of the scene which are irrelevant to solving this problem - I would also create a view which is more focused on the problem area.

If it then renders fine you know it's a flipped face. If it doesn't you look for the next most likely, which (I would say) is that there is no face there at all - by going into sub-object/polygon mode and trying to select the face. Of course it takes experience to know what the most likely causes are and how to exclude them, but I really believe this is one of the greatest skills of being a 3d artist.

By the way, if none of the above work you might try applying a Smooth modifier and ticking Auto Smooth to see if this fixes it.

Hope this helps!