[dzowada]

Anyone have any ideas?

The rod mesh was imported from an STL file from Unigraphics and are exact copies of each other.
The Teapots are used as control objects creatred in MAX9.

The rods and teapots are all using a standard aluminum material created using the 3Ds MAX 9 Maxwell plugin. The ONLY diffrence in materials is the upper teapot and rod do not have a bump map. The lower teapot and rod have the bumpmap turned on.



So,
Why is the lower Rod with the bumpmap black?

If the mesh is the problem, why is the Rod without the bumpmap OK?

If there is a material problem (UV maps etc.) the why is the lower (Bumpmap) teapot OK?

Thanks for the help.

Dan

[michaelplogue]

This is usually caused if any of your maps are greyscale instead of RGB. It'll do some funky things sometimes.....

[dzowada]

Nope, the map is "matte_abs_bump.png" 24 bit RGB from the MXM Lib Website.

Thanks anyway,
Dan

[lsega77]

When you create primitive geometry in 3Ds max, these object already come with default UVWs. I believe it's simply a 1:1:1 (U:V:W) coordinate map. This explains why the one teapot show the material without problems.

Usually when importing geometry from another app, either the UVW information is lost orexplicitly left out by the user during export. I personally never export from other apps with UVW applied because I prefer to do all my material application from within max including transforming UVWs.

Any geometry that doesn't have proper UVW coordinates will not rendering properly. Maxwell will render the geometry as a black mass. Other rendering engines will render the geometry either gray or the geometry's wireframe color.

Apply a simple 'UVW Map' modifier to your geometry and see how it renders out. Make sure to click the 'show map in viewport' button in the material editor (in your bump map slot)bso that you can scale the UVW Map to your liking.

Let me know if this is a little foggy and I'll provide some screen shots on how to get there (just not sure how proficient you are in max and don't want to seems rude or condescending or something).

hope that helps a little bit.

Luis

[dzowada]

Well, I'll be...

Thanks Luis,
I thought for SURE that I had applied a UVW map when I first noticed the problem on a larger assembly.

Thanks, now it works like a champ. I'm SO embaressed. I thought for SURE...

Thanks again
Dan

[lsega77]

Well, I'll be...

Thanks Luis,
I thought for SURE that I had applied a UVW map when I first noticed the problem on a larger assembly.

Thanks, now it works like a champ. I'm SO embaressed. I thought for SURE...

Thanks again
Dan

no worries Dzowada! Happens to me all the time. How you think I know about this one...

Glad I could help.

Luis