3ds Max X-refs not showing/working.

[Anonymous]

Hi!

I'm rather new to max. I've bought a bunch of plant models from VP to use for Archviz. When I X-ref them into a file everything looks fine at first. However, if I close the file and open it later on, I get some error messages and lots of the X-refs stop working properly. I've attached screenshots of the messages and the Xrefs. The x-refs should all be plants, but some of them are just empty pots or entirely invisible.

I've noticed that some of the materials in the x-refs have the same name, even though the maps are in different locations. Could this have anything to do with my issues? If yes, should I rename the materials or the maps? I ask only because changing things manually might take a long time and I don't want to start by doing things wrongly in that case.

Cheers!

[CiroCardoso3v]

Make sure, when you xref a scene, you save it before closing 3ds Max. For some reason, Max doesn't register you adding xrefs and doesn't save that information.

[Anonymous]

Hi! Thanks for your reply!

I don't think that is the issue in this case though. I have been very thorough with saving both my x-ref source files and the scene. It seems to me like there might be something wrong with the source files or that that "fight" with each other when x-refed in the same scene. Then again, I don't have a lot of experience in these matters with 3ds max. When I've x-refed some of my other models in other scenes there have been no issues.

Cheers!

[CiroCardoso3v]

Ok, that is weird. Let's start isolating possible causes. First thing, which Max version are you using? Second, can you open the 3ds max scene that you are trying to xref? Because the error you are getting is that the xref material is missing. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for helping out!

I'm using max 2022. The X-refed files open and render just fine when actually opened (not as x-refs). They also work fine as x-refs unless I have saved, closed and reopened the scene. After I save/close some of them become empty bounding boxes and others are fragments of the whole objects. This seems to be happening for a certain set of plant models from a VP pack that I bought, where all of the models act like this.