Disabling "Realistic" visual style - is it possible?

[Anonymous]

I want to disable Realistic visual style so that when I press F3 in one of the orthographic viewports it switches to Shaded instead. Is there any way to do this? Now on every new scene I have to manually change the visual style to Shaded every time I want to go out of the Wireframe mode which is tedious.

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

Open Max, change the 3 ortho viewports to shaded, save the empty scene as Maxstart.max in your default scenes folder (or where you have the Maxstart entry in the Configure User Files dialog set to).
F3 is a toggle between Wireframe and the current view. When you load max (without a Maxstart) there is no current view, so it toggles to Realistc. There no way, directly, that I know of to change that behaviour. Setting the viewports to Shaded (with Maxsstart) provides that "current" view.

Also, assign a Keyboard Shortcut to "Viewport Visual Style Shaded" (in the Views category). Ctrl+F3 would be a good choice as Shift+F3 is already assigned to Realistic.

[Anonymous]

Tried that and didn't help. 😞 It still goes from Wireframe to Realistic.

[Steve_Curley]

No it doesn't - at least not here. I did test it carefully before posting, and I just checked it again - working fine.

Are you sure you saved the Maxstart.max to the correct folder? When you open Max the 3 Ortho viewports should already be Shaded. If they're not, you didn't save the scene to right place.

[Anonymous]

That's really strange. I saved it in "My Documents\3dsmax\scenes". I think that's the correct location, isn't it? I recorded a video for proof:
http://uploading.com/files/41abb486/maxstart_problem.mp4/


I did the following:

1. went to My Documents\3dsmax\scenes and opened maxstart.max
2. F3 on all Ortho viewports and changed from Realistic to Shaded then pressed F3 again to get them back to Wireframe
3. saved the file and closed Max
4. opened Max. When I press F3 it goes back to Realistic again.

My Scenes folder in "Configure User Paths" is ".\scenes"

[Steve_Curley]

You're not understanding what Maxstart is - it loads automatically whenever you load Max, or you do a Reset. You shouldn't need to manually open it as it has already been loaded.

And you didn't do what I suggested. Set the viewports to Shaded THEN save as Maxstart. Setting them back to Wireframe entirely defeats the object of the exercise. Max has no "previous" vewport setting when it first loads - that is why you keep getting Realistic. If you save Maxstart correctly you will start the session with the Ortho views Shaded, so F3 can then toggle between shaded and Wireframe.

[Anonymous]

I perfectly well know what the maxstart file does. And I never load it after I open Max as you can see from the video (except for when I want to modify it).
Anyways, it worked now. It really doesn't know the previous state and after saving it in Shaded mode instead of Wireframe it worked. Thanks! 🙂

[Anonymous]

I also want to get rid if the realistic visual style because there's always this big irritating red block appearing. But more importantly, I'm trying to get back the Smooth+Highlights template.. Is there anyway to configure it?

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

Realistic is Smooth+Highlights with Hardware Rendering+Shadows+AO+Exposure Control enabled.
Shaded is Smooth+Highlights with Hardware Rendering disabled.

-Eric

[blipoids]

Hi,

Is there a way to permanently disable Realistic mode in Max across all scenes forever no matter what you do and like never have it even as an option maybe remove it from the menu even but forever permanently!?

Sorry, I'm just mad, just a little, just now.

Thanks,

[Steve_Curley]

You can't remove it but you can disable it by Customise > Preferences > Viewports (tab) > Choose Driver and select the D3D option. That is not scene dependant so should keep it disabled across all scenes and sessions. It will come back, however, if you remove your settings files or run Max as a different User (until you change it back to D3D).

[Anonymous]

thanks steve ..it works with me.
one more thing may be i should not post it here, but anyhow i couldn't found the solution i searched a lot. i have 3ds max 2012 and it crashes often.
i have win 7 home basic 32
core 2 duo E7500 2.93GHz
3gb ram
NVidia GeForce 8400 GS 512 video card
DX11

Thanks ...

[Steve_Curley]

You would be better off creating your own thead, however...

http://usa.autodesk.com/3ds-max/system-requirements/

Windows "Home" versions are not officially supported
32bit processor and/or 32 bit windows is very limiting
3GB of RAM, while technically sufficient to run Max is, in reality, not enough
Not familiar with that graphics card - could be a problem
Max uses DX9. There are reports of DX11 being slower as it has to emulate DX9.

[triffski]

I guess this is long solved, but in case anyone else out there needs it:

Shader Enforcer

My current client's Max setup makes this issue extra, extra annoying so I went off on a hunt. Seems like an excellent script.

[triffski]

Actually, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I think it's fighting against their scripts which are using similar methods to enforce retarded viewport display options. 

Hopefully it'll be good at home tho, will test later.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @triffski,

Is this still an issue for you?  Which version of Max are you on?  The MaxStart solution by @Steve_Curley works great on my end, but maybe it's a version specific problem.  I tested on 2017.  

I do think Steve's answer is the correct one, but I'd like verification or more information as to what is happening to you so I can help you if possible.  Thanks!

Best Regards,

[triffski]

Hi Alfred, thanks for the reply!

My current client uses a bunch of custom scripts that I don't fully understand, Max is launched from a Python script and unless it's fired up that way none of their custom stuff works. I'm not sure if these are new 'features' (ahem) in Max or their doing, but it includes stuff like scenes always opening displayed as a bounding box - sometimes these are 60, 80, 100 million poly scenes so in that respect it kind of makes sense. Personally I'd model stuff more efficiently, but that's not my department at the moment, maybe over a certain threshold Max automatically displays as boxes. We're using Max 2016 (very recent upgrade from 2011). I think there's a custom maxstart somewhere too that enforces units and gamma settings, so that's probably not an option.

Anyways, I could revert to D3D but Nitrous gives better performance, and with poly counts like that it's pretty crucial to have your GPU running at full potential. I suspect their scripts are interfering with the shader override method I found above, but I really don't know. 

What would be utterly awesome is to be able to pick two (or more?) viewport styles that Nitrous will cycle through on an F3. Then if a scene is forced to bounding box or whatever on load, I could have it set to the logical option of Shaded or Wireframe (with the option of edged faces if I want it), hit F3 and it's done. As it is, without fail I need to reach for the viewport dropdown which interrupts workflow. I have absolutely no need of Realistic until I get to lighting a scene, and then it would be quicker to hit up Prefs and change it to wireframe/realistic so I can still have confidence in what my keyboard shortcuts are going to do when invoked.

Hope this makes sense. I'm in VFX at the mo but come from a games background so working on single scenes with a higher poly count than probably every asset combined from game I've ever been credited on is a bit new to me. Still trying to make sense of it all 🙂

Cheers,

triff

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Thanks for the information @triffski, I appreciate it. 

As far as the cycling goes between modes, I'm sure it could be easily scripted and bound to a hotkey, but my scripting skills are limited.  I would possibly post a thread on the programming subforum, shouldn't be too hard to get an answer there.  

As an alternative method of trying to force your viewports to shaded with MaxStart (since it's not an option for you), you could put the super simple script attached to this message in your root/scripts/startup folder.  It's super basic but I've tested it and it switches the viewports to shaded on startup.   (But not on scene open, just on Max startup.)

However, it won't override a scene that is opened that had the shaded viewport saved in it, so that's another issue.  For that case I slightly modified the code in this thread written by @miauuuu and it's working when I test it.  (Full credit to Miauuuu as it's his/her code and I just modified it.)  Just put it in root/scripts/startup and when max starts it loads this in and it all works great.  It is also attached to this message.  Can you try that for me?  Thanks!

Best Regards,

[triffski]

Hi Alfred, thanks for that but neither does the trick at this end. Both open Max with a maximised Wireframe viewport but the scenes still open with Bounding Box. I did put these into the root/scripts/startup but I have a few locations they could feasibly go. 

C:\3dsmax2016x64\3ds Max 2016\scripts\Startup (root/scripts/startup)

C:\3dsmax2016x64\scripts\startup (root/../scripts/startup)

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2016 - 64bit\ENU\scripts\startup 

I'll try and give them a try on a vanilla install at lunch, i.e. launched from 3dsmax.exe not from the Python script.

Thanks again,

Stuart

[triffski]

On a side note, in case it gives any clues to whatever this current setup is doing, it also sets the scene back to Bounding Box on save. :?