Model Quality issues

[Skavengur]

I'm exporting models to w3d from 3dsmax6 and for the most part all goes well.
However, a few models end up with missing faces. If I crank up the geometry
level on export, the problem only gets worse. But the preview before exporting
looks PERFECT.
I've disabled LOD for the object, and verified that there isn't a texture
transparency problem. The polycount is roughly 1500-2500. I vaguely remember
someone in a post saying that if you have objects overlapping each other , it
can cause weird problems like this.

My question is...does anyone have any more info about this? Any other possible
ideas? Any help would be very much appreciated, as this has slowed down a
project of mine tremendously.

Thanks!

[hondo3000]

i never used 3Dsmax, but maybe you should check the directions of all normals.
if some of them are reversed, they are only visible from one side.

try to check this in director by making all models visible from both sides.

repeat with i= 1 to member("my3Dworld").models.count
member("my3Dworld").model<i>.visibility=#both
end repeat

if your models look now correct, go back to 3dsmax and make all normals look
into the correct direction. maybe you have in max someting like
backfaceculling for the preview-window.

if this is not working, maybe some max user can tell you a solution...

regards!

[Skavengur]

Hondo.....as usually you've come through. I though I had tried unifying the
normals within 3dsmax....but must have failed somewhere. Using a
visibility=#both with lingo causes the models to be complete.

You've totally made my day. Thanks so much for the help!

[hondo3000]

the good thing is that you know your models are complete, the bad thing about
visibility=#both is that it leads into bad performance.

i made this little screencapture some time ago to show how to flip normals in
cinema4D.
<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge
href="http://kisd.de/~lutz/crap/reverse_normals.mov">[url]http://kisd.de/~lutz/crap/r[/url]
everse_normals.mov</a>

and i think there must be something in 3Dsmax that displays the normals so you
can detect them. another problem with some normals showing into the wrong
direction is, that you get problems with "phong" shading.

so better controll all normals before you export. using " visiblility=#both"
will take you the half performance away because now the double number of
polygons have to be rendered, even if they are not visible.

cheers!