Mesh turned solid black, help!

[erilaz]

Have you tried trashing the Xform or collapsing the stack?

[Didgeroo]

Make sure you haven't somehow activated the vertex colorchannel to show.
Right click the object and check it's properties, lower left corner.

Cheers.

[bzouchir]

If you can put a snapshot of your Modifier Stack or tell us the location of the xform modifier in your stack it clarifies the situation!

[javierdl]

Erilaz, yes I collapsed the stack, thanks.
Didgeroo, I'll look into that later on today, thanks a lot, I hope is that :)

DPC

[maxFX]

Did you accidentally flipped normals while in edit poly mode?

[javierdl]

Bzouchir, the xform mod is no longer around, I collapsed it. The only mod in the stack is UVW Unwrap.
Didgeroo, I did check the vertex colorchannel, but it wasn't activated, thanks though.

This 1st image shows what it looked like before I flipped its poly normals:
http://webfolio.sunnylandbaja.com/temp/odd_texture_display.jpg

And this one after flipping them:

http://webfolio.sunnylandbaja.com/temp/afterflippingnormals.gif
I don't understand why some areas show the applied textured (checkers), but some doesn't.
I already tried flipping only a poly at a time to see if only some areas were flipped, but it doesn't do anything = the gray areas continue gray :(


http://webfolio.sunnylandbaja.com/temp/obj_props.gif

Should you need to see any other panel windows just let me know.

DPC

[javierdl]

And this is what it looks like while in the Unwrap mod:

http://webfolio.sunnylandbaja.com/temp/whileinunwrap.gif

[javierdl]

What I have just tried is moving 90% of the UVs from out of the blue lined square area in the Edit UVs window, inside it. I thought maybe the reason why the checkers were showing only in some areas was that not all the UVs were inside that square. But unfortunately that wasn't it.

DPC

[samhodge]

apply a solid purple material and see if it goes away

not green not blue not grey but purple

just joking

it looks like some of your polygons are in a black self illumated part of your texture

if all else fails export your model to .obj and back in again the bad man will go away

Sam

[javierdl]

samhodge, excuse my ignorance, but how can I tell if "some of my polygons are in a black self illuminated part of my texture" ?
Would that belong to something I can edit in the Mtl Editor by any chance?

Thanks in advance man,

DPC

[mouj]

Heya, the "black self illuminated" part would be fixed in the Material Editor, but it would require that you have set the material to be self illuminated, default is not. If it was a normals problem, faces would appear to be inside out, and they do not seem to be.
Maybe you should use a reset xform, collapse you stack, then maybe reset uvw coordinates from the Unwrap editor, before starting to unwrap again; but the screenshots do look strange, so i'm not quite sure. Maybe you could upload your file somewhere so people can have a look at it ?

mouj

[bzouchir]

seems to me like a UVW mapping problem!

try to work on max default light!
(just delete that omni you got there! )

Upply an unwrap UVW modiffier and check the mapping!

this is a mapping problem as far as I can tell!

keep us updated!

[javierdl]

The following 2 images is the result of no modifiers whatsoever, and no lights.
Additionally, the self-illumination was off, in the Mtl Editor.

http://webfolio.sunnylandbaja.com/temp/nomod_nolight02.gif

http://webfolio.sunnylandbaja.com/temp/nomod_nolight.gif


This last one shows what it looks like after being exported into a new scene:
http://webfolio.sunnylandbaja.com/temp/afterexporting.gif

Unfortunately reseting the UVs didn't help either :(
And lastly, here is the file JDL08feb05 (http://webfolio.sunnylandbaja.com/temp/jdl08feb05.zip)
Thank you kindly in advance for inspecting it :)

DPC

[Didgeroo]

-link removed- Max7 format btw.

Well, it's normals was inverted.
The camera you got there is scaled in a non-uniform fashion, skewing your viewport.
I'd get rid of it and add a new one.

Avoid non-uniform scaling at all costs, it messes up things badly. Funky effect on rotation though. ;)
The mesh itself got some open edges / unwelded verts, mouth area and whatnot, I'd go over it and sort that out.

Hopefully that file gets you on the way aleast.
Look into Box mapping or the other options, inside the unwrap modifier window in the menu.
Lots of nice unwrap options there, for a good start on it. Bonus is that it spaces the parts in the uv 0,1 space using that.
While if you use a normal uvmap modifier on the whole object, all parts overlap in the unwrap window.

Edit:
Oh, and as for the black mesh in the viewport, that's map channel 1 I believe, which had zero coords in it. Map channel 2 had some, the neck and that stuff.
What I did was clear the channels out, and applying a new Box unwrap from inside the unwrap modifier basically.

Cheers.

[javierdl]

Didgeroo,

Wow!
Firstly, thank you ever so kindly for modifying/fixing the file, and for all the valuable feedback :)
I can see that you do know this stuff quite well.

I haven't got a chance to get back on that, but I wanted to at least come and say the above.
I'll report on my results soon.

Thanks again man,

DPC

[Didgeroo]

Cheers, just glad to help. ;)

[javierdl]

Didgeroo,
I believe I have seen "invert normals" somewhere, but for the life of me I can't find it now :(
Could you tell me where to go exactly? Needless to say, I already did some searching and explored the Help file, unfruitfully.
Something else, could you elaborate some more on the "map channels"? For instance, how do you do to explore them? All I could do was just click up on the Map Channel dial. And if I did, max would warn me that all the data would be lost...
I suppose they are those found in:
Unwrap UVW/Select Face/Parameters/Channel/Map Channel =1

thank you Didgeroo

[Didgeroo]

Up in the tools menu, you got at the very bottom 'Channel Info'.
That window lists all current channels (polygons, selections, vertexmaps, uvmaps and whatnot).

What you're looking for is "#:map" in the ID column.
Deleting channels there is basically the same as applying a ClearUV modifier to the proper channel, I just prefer working with the Channel Info window as much as possible.

You can copy/paste UV sets and stuff easily there, exchanging them with the polygonset to edit your UV's in the regular max windows if you feel like it etc.

About the normals:
Modifier tab -> 'Edit Normals' modifier allows you to edit them individually and stuff.
Modifier tab -> 'Normals' have basic invert/unify options for the whole mesh/selections.

And indeed, you can set new mapchannels from the unwrap modifier as well.

Hope that helps a bit. :)

[Leionaaad]

Don't bother with normals, it has nothing to do with them.
I would go to the utilities panel, and select the "remove UVW".
Then start over the whole mapping process. An object turns totally black if you delete the unwrap UVW modifier. Is that what you did?
It has something to do with the mapping coordinates, I am sure.
What happens if you apply a different material?

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