imported objects become corrupt and cause crashing

[Magda_mghebrishvili]

many models appear flat black after importing, some files could be corrupt but it happens a lot so I assume something's wrong with my max, I have to create and assign materials one-by-one because of this, can anything fix this?

[MartinBeh]

Hi,

what file format are you importing from? Can you share your import settings? And what version of 3ds Max are you using?

The "black" could be caused by an unsupported material, wrong surface normals, or simply incorrect material values.

[Magda_mghebrishvili]

Hi,

I'm importing .max files and this are the merging settings, I use 2024 version, I tried edit normals modifier as well but didn't work.

[MartinBeh]

Hm, that is strange indeed.

What do you get when you directly open on of these .max files?

Can you share one of the .max files that you are trying to merge?

[Magda_mghebrishvili]

it's same even after opening a file, attached one scene I downloaded and does same after merging in my scene

[CAMedeck]

I don't have time right now to open your file, but since it has (2012) in it's name I am guessing it is old and uses Mental Ray materials.  Since Mental Ray isn't a render engine anymore, the existing materials can't be read.  Unless you have an old, old version of 3ds Max still functioning somewhere.

[MartinBeh]

Does your 3ds Max 2024 have V-Ray installed?

For me, when I open your .max file, I first get lots of missing texture bitmaps (.jpg, .JPG and.jpeg) and then the Scene Converter dialog comes up, showing me a lot of missing V-Ray elements, and also a few mental ray leftovers.

Without conversion, I get a basically black scene with a bunch of target lights. With conversion, I get a scene with all grey materials (which is to be expected without V-Ray, the conversion will convert all Vray materials so a default Arnold material, dropping all parameters).

Note that all your scene objects have their wirecolor set to black. So in case you have  Display panel > Display Color > Shaded set to "Object Color", this could also explain why everything looks black. Just switch from "Object Color" to "Material Color". 

[Magda_mghebrishvili]

I use Corona on my Max and I guess display setting change doesn't make difference because of that.

Assigning materials one-by-one is the only option then?

[MartinBeh · Accepted solution]

Well, if you have only Corona and not V-Ray installed, and you try to load something that uses Vray materials, it will not work.

So you will have to replace all materials with either some standard material that all renderers understand, or with new Corona materials. But you probably will loose all previous material properties (color, glossiness, reflectance, bitmap assignments). 

A simple piece of MAXScript code to remove the broken materials from all scene objects would be:

objects.material = undefined

But maybe you could install a trial version of Vray, load the files with all their vray material properties, and then convert them to something usable?

Or you could try the Corona Converter?