Problem with settings

[Anonymous]

I don't know what is going on here. What settings I have messed up, but my viewport don't show quality renders anymore when I apply a material. I have included a copy of the screen shot. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance...

I made a simple shape. I applied a basic material. I turned down the opacity to 50 percent. Turned on Two-sided. Changed the diffuse color to a violet color and turned up the specular to create a glare. In the material editor, it looks like it should. In the viewport...it looks like very low quality. i realize that it's not suppose to be render quality, but it seems like the quality use to look better than this in my viewports. Notice how patchy the material is in the viewport. It's very frustrating. Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

See Attachments.

ivan

[Anonymous]

Isn't there a way to change it so that the default setting every time I start a new project will have the viewport shading set to best?

[Anonymous]

Must be somewhere in the default INI settings, but I couldn’t find it.
Make a search, maybe you’ll have more luck than me. 🙂

ivan

[CAMedeck]

Is that something you can change, then save to the Maxstart.max file?

[Anonymous]

No Chris it isn’t, at least in my experience.

ivan

[Anonymous]

Just for the heck of it, I tried to reset the scene, change the viewport shading to best, and save the custom UI scheme to the Maxstart file. I reset the scene, but it didn't work.

[Steve_Curley]

It does save with the scene, and therefore in Maxstart.max (sorry Ivan). I just tested it seveal times closing and reopening Max each time. Admittedly I changed the option in the Viweport Label > Right-Click > Configure > Lighting and Shadows dialog, not from the Quad menu or the Views menu.

If it doesn't work for you, then all I can think of is that you're saving Maxstart.max in somewhere other than the default Scenes directory.

[Anonymous]

My Start file is in the scenes as usual Steve. It didn’t work in the past I will try again later.
Anyway your post is good news.

ivan

Edit;You are right Steve it works I don’t know why it didn’t work for me, maybe because I oft have more than one maxstart files.
That is good, thank you Steve,
Allen, sorry to have misled you, but it is fantastic that we all are having Steve, isn’t it! 🙂

[Steve_Curley]

You're welcome 🙂

Easy to miss if you have multiple Scene directories.

[Anonymous]

If I were to save it in the scene directory...where would I save it? The program's maxstart is found in my ".\Documents and Settings\Allen\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsmax\2009 - 32bit\enu\UI" directory. It's not located in the scene directory.

[Steve_Curley]

That's the wrong place.

Customise > Configure User Paths.
At the top is an entry for the Project Directory. The default Scene directory is directly under that, so if the Project Directory is
<code>"C:\MyMaxProjects\Wibble" </code>then the default Scenes is <code>"C:\MyMaxProjects\Wibble\Scenes"</code>.
That is where Max will look for Maxstart.

Note. Maxstart.max not Maxstart.anythingelse. Those others are UI files - keyboard, colour, menu customisations.

[Anonymous]

My question is...where in the project file do I save the MaxStart file? In the root of the scene directory? Or is it one of the sub directories? My user path is already configured for the scene I am working on. Where do I save the MaxStart file?

[Steve_Curley]

Sorry about the paths above - the forum kindly stripped out the backslashes.... I've edited them back in.

The correct place is the Scenes directory directly under the Project directory.

[Anonymous]

Wow! That seemed complicated. I was thinking there was a general setting that I could change that would make the viewport shading quality whatever I changed it to regardless of which scene I was working on, but it only applies to that particular scene, correct? I did like what you guys said. I had my new scene. I changed the value of the viewport shading to best. I saved my scene as "MaxStart.max" and shut down 3ds max. I restarted...and my setting stayed like I set it. That's interesting. They should consider making a general setting that changes the scope of it globally...as in all scenes.

[Steve_Curley]

You can forcibly change it if you wish. In the Configure User Paths dialog scroll down the list until you see a "Maxstart" line. Modify that line, change the path to where you want to store your Maxstart.max then OK it. You should see that the "Make Absolute" button is greyed out (meaning it is already an absolute path). The other lines, if you select one, will have "Make Relative" greyed out (because they are already relative - to the Project Directory).