Horrible UI scaling issues

[Anonymous]

So I've had this problem with my MAX 2018 UI (see attached) - I uninstalled and updated to MAX 2020 and am having the same issue.

I did a little googling and looking through the forums here and tried the suggested actions - Like fiddling around with the control panel and changing the graphics display drivers... But no luck... I also tried updating all of my video card drivers - No luck.

I also have MAX 2017 installed and though i did have sizing issues b/c of my 4k screen - I was able to do the "Max.exe.manifest" fix to resize it - which I also tried on my current issue.

I am working with dual screen monitors - one is 4k and the other is 1080p - both have the same UI issue. My main graphics card is a Quadro K5200 and my secondary card is a 1070ti.

I'm at a complete loss how to fix this.

[irishman_team_kilber]

did you change VGA drivers in max or just in your windows display control panel?

[Anonymous]

Both

[brentscannell · Accepted solution]

hi @Anonymous 

Can you check your windows environment variables for something called "QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO = auto".

We've seen some software install this as a user variable, causing problems with other applications using a Qt UI system.

if you have this, can you try removing the environment variable and restarting everything?

[Swordslayer]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I am working with dual screen monitors - one is 4k and the other is 1080p - both have the same UI issue. My main graphics card is a Quadro K5200 and my secondary card is a 1070ti.

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Are you using different UI scaling for each monitor? IIRC max doesn't support that yet (the UI is still a mix of old and new technologies where the UI scaling for the old stuff is kind of a hack).

[Anonymous]

That worked! Thanks!

[RobH2]

Brent, thanks for this. I've had scaling issues also. I can't wait to try your suggestion. I'll report back.

[RobH2]

Bummer, I didn't have that in my Environment Variable. Worth a try though. 

[brentscannell]

That environment variable seems to only be related to the black areas adjacent to improperly scaled parts of the UI. I've tasked the devs with finding us an immunity for this environment variable, since it's getting more and more common that some applications install this which has impact across the board on any application using a Qt UI framework.

What UI scaling issues are you experiencing? There are several that we know about, but I want to make sure that I'm accurately tracking each one.

[tshaw]

I have a similar problem but it only affects certain UI elements, namely the Material Editor (simple mode only), and the Preferences for example. I've tried every solution listed on multiple sites:

• scaling fonts through the Windows 10 Control Panel, 149%, 150%, 200%
• changing the resolution of my monitors (2560x1440 native) to 1080
• adjusting the fonts MS Serif, MS San Serif, Courier in the Registry
• uninstalling and reinstalling all Autodesk applications

I haven't been able to find a solution for this, and since I am on a company laptop I can't simply wipe the drive clean which seems to be the only solution. The problem is minor, but it's troublesome nonetheless.

[krzysiek_nowotka]

I have exactly the same problem on my 1080p laptop with 100% scaling. Have you found any solution?  

[tshaw]

Not for my issue, no. In the past I've been able to modify the fonts in the registry and that would fix it, but not anymore. I've even deleted all of my fonts and their registry entries, then reinstalled them but that didn't help. I'm in a corporate environment and have asked to have my machine re-imaged so I can start fresh but ultimately it's not a productivity issue so it's not a priority and somewhat unnecessary.

[tshaw]

Just installed Max 2021 and have the same issue, so it's carried over from previous installs. It has to be a system issue.

[StephenMF]

I think I have the same issue.
And I am missing the bottom part of this flyout "modes and display" in biped.
It's where you rename the piped rig.

It's working if I switch to 125% display scale in windows.

[zvsmail]

Surprised, that topic is marked Solved while questions are still arising. Specially registered to share my solution here. Hope that may help those who still struggling. Once your Windows Hi DPI is set OK, it's worth to try following.

Actually, you have to turn off graphics adapter scaling.

Nvidia Control Panel > Display Scaling Mode > No scaling (as shown on the screenshot)

In my case, settings above were grayed out. To re-enable, I had to turn off NIS (Nvidia Image Scaling)

Here's a good guide how to ENABLE it, so you do everything opposite to that:
https://appuals.com/nvidia-image-scaling-not-working/

Hope it helps. If you are not on Nvidia, to disable scaling, I'd recommend digging in the direction of Display Scaling settings for your graphics adapter. It seems new Qt GUI thinks that HI-DPI routines should be applied when video adapter reports display scale other than 1.0. Good luck.

[aharmlesspie1]

Right click and open the properties for the 3dsmax.

 Go to the compatibility tab

 Go to "Change high DPI settings" and check the override down at the bottom.

 Hit ok, hit apply, and congrats

 

[tshaw]

The problem was somewhere deep in my profile and none of these solutions worked in this case. They have worked for me before, but not this time. Creating a new profile was the only fix short of reinstalling the system.

[geoff]

I am experiencing this on my development machine as of very recently. The plugin that I work on uses both runtime and resource-based Win32 dialog templates, and this behavior only shows up for the latter.

The specific difference here is that my runtime ones specify the dialog's font as "MS Shell Dlg". This is the old-skool way. Whereas the resource-based dialogs use "MS Sans Serif" which is the default in Visual Studio's resource editor. In both cases, the font size is specified as 8pt. These are supposed to map to the same thing.

If I specify "MS Sans Serif" for my runtime templates, they also suffer from this issue, and if I specify "MS Shell Dlg" for my resource-based templates, the problem goes away. This font-related issue affects the actual dialog units, which results in a one-third additional scale for "MS Sans Serif" dialogs when converting coordinates via MapDialogRect.

Clearly this is further localized to specific machines, because customers are confirming the behavior NOT being present for them. Since @tshaw sees it on the profile level, at least that narrows the problem further. From what I've seen, it's font-related.

The following StackOverflow answer by Cody Gray on this topic is a good read: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6057761 ... I did recently update my Win 10 Pro OS to version 22H2. I also updated my NVidia drivers. Not much else, and no notable moment when I suddenly became aware of this after performing some action.

[geoff]

This problem has plagued me now for about a year and I've wasted an incredible amount of time troubleshooting it. That includes trying every suggestion already in this thread and a ton of things not mentioned here. The only thing I have avoided doing is starting with a fresh system, because that's painful.

So today, I finally bit the bullet and bought a new SSD, with the goal of rebuilding my system while keeping the old one on hand just in case. I've spent the day rebuilding my system from scratch.

This has completely resolved the problem!!!

Specifically, I've installed Windows 10 Pro 22H2 on a clean drive, then ran Windows Update to bring in the handful of required cumulative updates and fixes. After restarting to finalize the system updates, I installed Firefox, Autodesk Access and 3ds Max 2024. That was the point when I was able to confirm that the problem is gone.

I'm now going through the tedious process of rebuilding my development environment. I'm taking regular snapshots with System Restore. Every time I install new software, I run 3ds Max to check for the telltale signs of this issue reappearing. I do this by opening the Render Setup dialog and looking at the edit/spin controls in the Common section. If the height of the edit box matches the height of the adjoining spinner control, all is well.

I'll be on the lookout, and will definitely report back here if I see the problem again. If it shows up, hopefully I'll be able to work out what caused it. My leading theory right now is that the system was just a total mess, and possibly corrupt in unfixable ways, following years of abuse. I built the system in 2017 and have never done a fresh OS install until now.

[tshaw]

That's great! Also, unfortunately the biggest step you can take to fixing it when all else fails. The only other option before total rebuild is to make a new profile and manually move stuff over to it, but a clean install (imo) is the best option if you have time.