Arnold material slots will turn black

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm new with Arnold rendering and recently installed max 2018. When I use Arnold standard surface material and turn the Transmission to 1.0, all the material slots will turn black and not able to see. Please let me know if anyone had experienced the same and possible how to fix it. Thanks many! 

[-niels-]

Welcome to the community!

Can you show a screenshot?
or detailed steps to reproduce the issue?
The only time when i get a black (Arnold) material slot is when i have the Activeshade window open and 3DS Max is rendering.
But i haven't had a situation where they'd all turn black.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply! I couldn't figure out why, but when I switch the ActiveShade Mode from Arnold  to  ART., it seems to be happen. Epically when I turn the Transmission to full transparent, the slot turns into black. It's just one of those bugs I guess. I need to restart my Max file to get back normal. 

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous and welcome to the community,

I can't seem to repro but maybe I have a newer version of Arnold.  Would you please log into Manage.Autodesk.com and download the latest Arnold installer for Max 2018?  I wonder if this problem is addressed there.  Thanks for trying that.

Otherwise when I switch activeshade renderers I don't see a change in my material editor slots.  Is your mat. editor unlinked from the production renderer in the "assign renderer" rollout?

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I just wanted to follow up here, any progress on this issue?

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply. I have most updated Max and Arnold but still have this issue. I'll try to fix this later when I have time. Thanks so much and I really appreciate your interest!

Best,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

No problem at all.  I do want to help here if possible, but I'm having some trouble to repro this.  Please let me know if there is anything I can do.

Best Regards,

[jasonP7RZX]

This is what he's talking about - is there a fix to see preview of material - now its just black (yes on the latest update)

[jasonP7RZX]

I just found the fix - There's two places to choose your renderer - I thought material editor portion was missing from 2018 

It's still in the old place at bottom of the Common parameter rollouts.

[-niels-]

@jasonP7RZX, good tip but i'm not sure if that's it.

It isn't for me in any case, for me it looks like this:

@Alfred.DeFlaminis, i have some reproducible steps for my case:

1. Start new from template. (my Arnold template, which you may remember.)

2. Start an Activeshade render.

3. During the rendering (before it's finished) open up the material editor.

(actually, just tried and i can even let the Activeshade render finish, still get the same black squares)

Seems like the materials don't get rendered when the Activeshade window is up.

(if i close the Activeshade window before bringing up the material editor, they get rendered properly.)

Hope this is useful information.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Thanks @-niels-, I see this when I switch to activeshade, but not otherwise.  Are you all using activeshade here?  I'll log this now.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

I am getting this same result as well in 3ds Max 2020 Arnold 5.4.0.0   Product Version 3.2.53.0

[Anonymous]

This problem is still persistent.  I get it even using the newest verion of Arnold.  MAXtoA-4.0.0.73.2020

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

This problem is still persistent.  I get it even using the newest verion of Arnold.  MAXtoA-4.0.0.73.2020

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This is a limitation with the current 3dsmax/Arnold integration.3dsmax can`t render Material Previews and Active-Shade at the same time.This is why Material Previews will get black when ActiveShade is running.

[PlanetGranate]

Yes, the problem still persists years later but AD really still thinks Max has a lot of life left in it....