topic Re: material not showing in 3ds Max Forum

material not showing

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 11:56:36 GMT

would someone be so kind and tell me why may material on channel 2 is not showing?

I have tried scaling and everything else i can think of.

Re: material not showing

-niels- — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 13:05:57 GMT

I messed around a bit, so it's not entirely your setup... but at some point i noticed you had the bitmap for your turned face set to channel 2.

With a multi-sub object map this needs to remain at 1, your material is already mapped to 2.

At least, that's what i think the problem is...

Re: material not showing

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 13:37:40 GMT

Thanks for looking at it @-niels- but im pretty sure i need it set to 2. I was told that you can have multipal uv maps if the material ID in the uv map matched the the material ID in the material slot. Also I have done this in the past and it worked fine.

Matter of fact I redid the uv maps and got it to work. Just wont show up when i render. go figure. I guess it is just one of those days.

Re: material not showing

-niels- — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 14:39:41 GMT

Hi @Anonymous,

That's pretty strange, if i port everything over to Arnold (because i know my way around that better) i can't get the texture to show unless it's in map channel 1. (the bitmap texture)

Your UV modifier does say it's on map channel 2, but i don't think the actual bitmap should/needs to be.

See my screenshots:

I won't say your setup is wrong, i don't know for sure... but i know it doesn't work for me...

Someone with more knowledge on map channels could probably give a better answer...

( @Diffus3d ? )

Re: material not showing

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 14:45:47 GMT

Maybe I should make the switch to Arnold eventually. I tried it once and all my established materials, exposures, and lighting went down the drain. I have too much work on my materials to have to change everything.

Maybe I am missing something.

Re: material not showing

-niels- — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 14:53:25 GMT

On my first reply i was using the scanline renderer and was seeing the same, i just did the Arnold version to check.
It's probably something that has to do with what type of object/material/texture is assigned to which map channel, but i don't know the official methods.
I'm basically a hobbyist, so i use what works for me and i might be doing stuff wrong as well...

In the end, getting your render the way you want is the important part... though this is making me curious as how you're supposed to use map channels.

Re: material not showing

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 15:26:58 GMT

look thru this

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-forum/uvw-map-question/m-p/7378379#M145548

post 8 i think

thanks

Re: material not showing

-niels- — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 15:55:57 GMT

Aah, ok...
Still not sure if i understand it correctly, but the way i'm getting it is that you create a "link" between the MATERIAL ID and the UVW Map channel.
So the map channel for the texture doesn't really come into the picture.

In all honesty, i've done what they're describing with just setting the material id.
But if you have UV's that don't align properly i can understand this way of doing things.
Then again, i might be completely wrong in my understanding...

Googling "3ds Max Channel mapping" hasn't been all that helpful either, the top link led to this:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-C4D98019-3568-4EC3-AF70-A38C0F975D51-htm.html
But it didn't improve my understanding that much...

---edit---

just to show, i've attached a simple cylinder shape with just Material ID's and no UV mapping using both your textures.

Re: material not showing

brentscannell — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 16:26:00 GMT

Hi @Anonymous and @-niels-

I'm no expert in this either but I have played around with this model a little bit and have a few observations:

-I believe the map channels are set correctly for the intended result, and don't believe the way these behave to change between render engines. What renderer are you using Mark?

-Neils' screenshots had the bitmaps wired to base colors which gives somewhat immediate results, however the original scene is set up to use the bitmaps a specular level maps. To get these to work as intended on Arnold materials or Max Physical materials renderable in ART, I wired the map to both the reflection color and the roughness and seemed to start giving me the expected results - without alternating the map channel.

Re: material not showing

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 17:40:43 GMT

I am using Quicksilver Brent.

I have been kinda partial to it for some time now.

Re: material not showing

-niels- — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 17:56:27 GMT

@brentscannell wrote:

-Neils' screenshots had the bitmaps wired to base colors which gives somewhat immediate results, however the original scene is set up to use the bitmaps a specular level maps. To get these to work as intended on Arnold materials or Max Physical materials renderable in ART, I wired the map to both the reflection color and the roughness and seemed to start giving me the expected results - without alternating the map channel.

Yeah, i wired them into a bumpmap on my Arnold images just to give them some depth... not sure if specular would create the same effect, but guess it depends on what you're going for.

But you say you didn't change the map channel... so now i don't understand why i can't get the texture to show up if i leave it at channel 2...

Re: material not showing

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 21:23:55 GMT

By having multipal uv maps you can change the scale and rotation independently of each other.

Re: material not showing

-niels- — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 21:28:44 GMT

yeah ok, but in the example i posted i can do that by changing the size and position of the texture as well... so still wouldn't need to do UV mapping.

But that's on simple geometry, when it's more complex i can imagine situations where it would be useful.
Though i guess you'd get to unwrapping the UV's pretty quick and then it doesn't matter much anymore...

Guess we can go on about this for a while.

Re: material not showing

brentscannell — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 21:36:14 GMT

Here's what my material setup for arnold looked like and the result. I had to bring the basecolor weight down to 0 or very close to see the effect of the specular maps.

@Anonymous I'll see what I can do with the original scene to get it to work with your renderer as well, but the same material set up with physical materials ought to work in ART renderer as well:

Re: material not showing

brentscannell — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 22:52:12 GMT

So I re-wired the maps to the reflection inputs of the standard material instead of specular color inputs. Honestly I am not 100% familiar with how these 2 parameters interact with each other, but I think the render is more along the lines of what you were expecting? I removed the sky light from the render as it was making it very very bright.

Re: material not showing

-niels- — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:50:38 GMT

Sorry for pulling stuff from a different topic, but it seems related to eachother and i'm pretty confused.

@Anonymous, you posted these files (map1&2) in this topic.

From the screenshots you post at the end it all looks pretty ok... but here's what it looks like if i open it on my pc:

After moving the omni light up a bit:

And after changing the channel for the bitmap to channel 1:

I have such a different scale compared to your renders and the way the map channel behaves differs as well, this is all making me wonder what in the world is going on...

I know i can correct it, but i'd expect it to look similar to what you saved... which it doesn't... which confuses me enormously...

So without any explanation for this behavior, i think you can ignore most of my comments.

@brentscannell, would you know of any reason why i'm seeing this difference?

@Anonymous, does the example file i posted look anything like my render when you view it?

---edit---

just checked and i didn't post a render of that file, so here's one to compare:

Re: material not showing

brentscannell — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:53:04 GMT

@-niels- what does the UV mapping look like on channel 1? Could you take a screenshot of what it looks like in the viewport with UV override on? I bet you the UVs are stretched on that top face on channel 1 because of the planar mapping

Re: material not showing

-niels- — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:58:47 GMT

@brentscannell, is this what you meant? (had to look up the override bit...)

Re: material not showing

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 15:31:08 GMT

I had to look it up as well and mine looks the same

Re: material not showing

brentscannell — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 16:17:05 GMT

Strange indeed, mine is showing stretched UVs on channel 1: