Flint

I had a strange problem happen at work today and was wondering if anyone has had the same issue. 3ds max 2016 with the latest V-ray. When I was animating a camera you could see the camera moving in all 3 views except the camera view, it wouldn't show any movement and was if disabled. If I saved it and re-opened the file it would work as normal until I tweaked the camera animation again. The view wasn't disabled and I had unchecked 'Only in Active View' in the time config. Tried importing things into a new scene but still the same and tried it on a different PC and no change.

Clear smoothing groups, Set it to 30 not 45 and then auto smooth should sort it as Jason said. Or use the smooth by 30 button in the graphite ribbon.

Could it be window crossing is turned on in your preferences?

This is a good tutorial to get you started http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/chaos-group-vray/compositing-v-ray-render-layers-in-photoshop/

Thanks for letting me know guys and sorry Tom for kind of hijacking your thread. I'll have a look into into and give BlueGFX a call.

Whereabouts are you upgrading from a student version to a full version for £400 (3ds Max). I'd be very interested in this but can't see the offer.

I'd use multiscatter. I did come across a nice tutorial doing what you want a long time ago but can't find it again. Think they used an animated noise(?) map in the rotation, but not 100% sure.

You could animate a blend material which would fade from one to the other. If you wanted it to look like it was being painted in strips maybe an animated mask would work, but not tried this myself.

Autodesk are (or were a few months ago) offering a free copy of max for non commercial use if you have been made unemployed and used to work in the field. I think this may be what you are referring to.

Here's a quick tutorial for the snapshot tool which I refer to from time to time. Doesn't cover the animation but a good starting point. http://polygonpoop.dk/2007/05/someone-posed-question-how-do-i-make.html

Off the top of my head it sounds like they need scaling in sub-object mode. I had the same problem and it was because I scaled a part of my character not the element/poly. Resetting Xref helped on that occasion but been awhile since I had the problem so a little foggy.

If I have a tree i use a lot I save it in its own max file and also a separate proxy file. That way I can import the proxy to the file I'm working on and xref the material from the max file of the original tree. May be better ways of doing it though.

http://vray.us/vray_documentation/vray_render_elements.shtml "The wire color of the object as set in the 3dsmax scene. This can be used to generate masks for the objects based on their wire color". I kinda had a Doh! moment when I read it too as always set up VRayMtlID or VRayObjectID for masking. Thanks for the tip.

Or if you have any children, nieces or nephews, or just a good friend who has children at school/uni/college get them to buy you it for you. The Student offer is even cheaper than the OEM.

Have you got the 'hidden edges' box ticked in the vray material. If so un-check it.