MAX 2012 Issues

[erickdt]

Hello All,

 

I recently moved to a new company that upgraded to MAX 2012 about 2 weeks ago. Up to this point I had been using MAX 2009 from which I never upgraded because I never saw the need to do so. It worked, it was stable and predictable. Now that I'm on MAX 2012 a series oof issues have cropped up that I am hoping the community can help me address, hopefully before I need to get Autodesk tech support involved. It occurs to me that it might be possible that these issues are caused by improperly setup settings. I should add that I have installed the latest service pack and hotfixes. Anyway, in no particular order my issues are listed below.

 

-AutoCAD blocks do not show up in viewport when imported as "elements": When importing AutoCAD files all blocks can be selected but do not appear in the viewport. The workaround has been to apply an edit mesh modifier to all of the blocks which makes them miraculously appear. In larger files (with hundreds of blocks) this can take several minutes to do. For me this is a major issue as almost aall of my MAX files are derived from AutoCAD models. Also, as a matter of principle shouldn't there be streamlined interoperability between Autodesk products?

 

-No ability to deselect objects: In the past if you say, selected everything in your MAX file you could hold down the control button and unselect objects at will. The same was true for subobject selection. From some reason this no longer works in MAX 2012 (nor did it work in 2011). I cannot for the life of me think why this feature would be removed.

 

-Random program freezes: I find that the 2012 version of MAX is very prone to freezing. It happens almost every time I am working on a model at all sorts of various points in my work. It mostly seems to happen when interacting with the material library window or when working with proxies. In fact I have stopped using proxies all together because of this issue.

 

-Material library changes: It wasn't broke why did it need to be fixed?

 

-Batch rendering issues: When using the batch renderer and changing the output file names therein they do not update the file names listed in the batch render window. If you click on the output button to speciffy the output it is correct but not in the window itself (where camera and view name, etc. is located).

 

Certain materials do not show in viewport: Specifically blend/composite materials and materials with any significant amount of self illumination.

 

-UVWs randomly lost or remapped: This is especially frustrating. I'll setup my UVWs on an object only to find them totally changed when I hide and then unhide them or open the file on another computer.

 

-Viewport wigs out with alot of proxies: Another reason I have stopped using proxies.

 

-Limited number of modifiers can be added to an object?: I noticed that in 2011 and 2012 it seems that you are limited to about 10 modifiers per object before you need to collapse the mesh in order to add more modifiers. Why?

 

Any help with any of these issues would be greatly appreciated. Anything that can't be figured out here will be forwarded onto Autodesk tech support. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

E

[Devin Johnston]

Erick I've been using 2012 for about 6 months and I haven't experienced any of the issues your describing, have you tried reinstalling it? I know that's a pain but it's cheaper than calling Autodesk tech support.

[Lester_Masterson]

I'd like to chime in here to.

 

I am experiencing about 60% of the same issues as Erickdt.

 

My specific issue is in opening a new scene after working in MAX. About 70% of the time, MAX locks up forcing me to kill the process.

 

I find that there is very little help available for these issues, so it seems that perhaps Eric and I have something misconfigured ???

_______

 

Max is up to date with SP2

Nitro ON ~ I have tried with DirectX - no change

Windows 7 Pro 64bit (updates installed)

Aero ON ~ I have tried with Aero OFF - no change

ATI Radeon 4800

IPv6 disabled

[erickdt]

Erick I've been using 2012 for about 6 months and I haven't experienced any of the issues your describing, have you tried reinstalling it? I know that's a pain but it's cheaper than calling Autodesk tech support.

 

Hi Devin,

 

When I first started we were still on MAX 2011 which had many of the same issues. This makes me think that re-installing will not solve the issue although that is still an option.

 

We have an Autodesk subscription so I'm not worried about having to pay for tech support. I just was wondering if any of these things were easy to fix on my own.

 

E

[Victor Erthal]

Hi Erik,

I have heard of some of the issues, but the strangest one seems to be the limit in the number of modifiers. I ran attest, and do not have the issue. About the deselecting, the ctrl key, was set to add objects. In previous versions you could deselect with a single click still with the ctrl key. looks like that was removed. But you can (as in many previous versions) use the alt key to remove objects from selection.

[A.Mitov]

Erick, you can deselect but that has now been assigned to the ALT key (which I think is smarter than CTRL which both selects and deselects)

 

By the way, I'm disappointed with Max 2012 too. It introduces more bugs and problems than new features. That's why I'm staying with Max 2009 until a better release. This one is totally disappointing.

 

Here's my list of bugs that I've encountered so far (and I've not even used Max 2012 for for more than a weak total):

 

Mouse wheel zoom sometimes breaks - Occasionally when I try to zoom with the mouse wheel it just won’t let me to. I have to pan around and then it’ll let me zoom again. Definately a bug since I’ve never encountered such problem in Max 2009

 

 

Xrefs are broken too - Add a .max file as Xref scene and uncheck the option “Visible” - now it becomes invisible in the viewport. But… When you close Max and reopen the scene the xref scene is VISIBLE again despite that the option is unchecked! The “Display as box” option does not work too.

 

You can't rotate the sphere in the preview window of Slate editor - In Max 2009 I could rotate the sphere in the sample slots to inspect how the material looks. In Max 2012 when I press and drag the middle mouse button the sphere won’t rotate.

 

Disappearing and badly shaded lines in "Nitrous" display mode - They just disappear when looking them at an angle.

 

Can't exit Wireframe mode after panning - When I enter Wireframe mode while panning I cannot go back to Shaded mode. Try it yourself - make sure you are in Shaded mode, click and hold the middle mouse button and pan around without releasing it. Then press F3 while still panning to go into Wireframe mode and then release the middle mouse button. Now if you try to go back into shaded you can’t! Unless you manually go and change it through the viewport options in the top left corner of the viewport.

 

And I'm sure the list goes on and on.

[Chewbacca]

I too have had a few problems mentioned here, but not as many as you have mentioned Erick. I seemed to have some random program freezes after updating a display driver, and had to do a re install of the driver making sure I had cleaned all the old driver files from my system.

 

Here is a way to revert back to the old material editor if that is what you mean by "changes"

Revert back to old material editior

 

C:\Users\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMaxDesign\2012 - 64bit\enu\plugcfg

 

edit sme.ini old material browers=1

 

I have been trying to work thru the flaws with 2012 only because the viewport performance for me has been better on my system with large scenes

[ihabkal]

my main issue with all versions of max is the communication plugin that connects it with Autodesk sometimes crashes the system, sometimes it uses a core of the cpu and slows everything with no apparent reason. and the only way to stop it is to kill the process.

[erickdt]

Thaanks everyone for your responses. I appreciate it. Especially thanks for the Alt+Click tip for deselecting options. Oh how I've missed it. Anyway, I guess it's time to raise this directly to Autodesk. I was hoping Ken Pimental might have some input but I guess not. Thanks again all! I'll let you know how I make out.

 

E

[kenpimentel]

Finally stumbled into this thread. I think that the big difference is just how much max 2012 leverages the cpu/gpu more than 2009. This can cause greater dependencies on your GPU driver and OS config. If you have the right system, you'll see max 2012 do amazing things. If you don't, you'll see random issues that are hard to explain/resolve.

 

Best thing to do is to try using max 2012 and see how it works. We have the "save as 2010" feature to help you manage a situation where you need to roll back to an older release.

 

Make sure you've installed both the SP1 and SP2 for max 2012. They address a bunch of viewport "glitches". Nitrous was a big, big effort for us and we're still stomping on bugs.

 

If you're still having issues, please report them: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=5600504&linkID=9241177

 

Remember to send your CERs in too - we need those to identify the big crashers that we have to fix.