I’ve got a problem that is driving me crazy!!!!!! When i apply a glass material to the plates of the stairs the metal constuction also recives it, and when i try to set construction to metal, the plates change from glas to metal. How are they linked, where can i check that and can i separate them???

3Ds Max 2012 Design/Win7 64bit
Q6700/6Gb/Radeon HD4870 1GB

Read up on Multi/Sub-Object materials and Material ID’s.

What kind of “stairs” are you using. AEC Stair should already have the Material ID’s set.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

I’m not using predefined stairs, i made them myself

3Ds Max 2012 Design/Win7 64bit
Q6700/6Gb/Radeon HD4870 1GB

You still need to read up on the Multi Sub-Object Material type, and on Material / Polygon IDs.

See this post for an explanation, then apply that logic to your stair model.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

More information needed....

Then it sounds like the steps and other parts are one of the following:

All part of the same Editable Poly or Editable Mesh.
Grouped.
Everything is selected when you apply the material.

If all part of the same Editable Mesh or Poly, and you want to keep it that way, you can select on sub-object Element the steps and assign the “step” material. Then do an Edit > Select Invert to select all the other elements. Then assign the “metal” material. This will automatically assign Material ID’s to the two sets of elements and create a Multi/Sub-Object material.

If Grouped, open the Group, and assign the materials to the members, not the Group.

If you have everything selected, then don’t.

More information needed....
Please describe how you made the stairs, or zip the scene file and attach it to your response.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

They waren’t in any group (to my knowlage) I even deleted the panels and made new ones, but the problem was still there… But I managed to fidle something up and works now. I’m sending you the problematic file. Thank you :)

3Ds Max 2012 Design/Win7 64bit
Q6700/6Gb/Radeon HD4870 1GB

	Attachment
10210_7UAZffmYX0nM6vGy9BPk.zip

After the fiddling, what is the problem now.

OK, I see it. If I pick the material off Box 295 (the I-beam, you need to rename your objects), it is a Multi/Sub-Object material. One of the materials is the yellow glass.

That means, for every object you assign this material, all sub-objects which have a Material ID of 2, will receive the yellow glass material. This shows up in the render.

An easy fix is to create a new material and assign it to the all the metal pieces.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

	Attachment

Other ways to make an I-beam:

Splines > Extended Splines: Wide Flange. Set to the correct size. Add an Extrude modifier. (My preference.) For the ones at an angle, add a Skew modifier with the Skew Axis on Y, Direction 90, Amount to a value to meet your needs.

-or-

Draw a spline the length of the I-beam. Add a Sweep modifier and choose Wide Flange for the Built-in-Section. And add a Skew modifier as above.

I also noticed your staircase is only 3 generic units wide. Your System Units is set to 1 Unit = 1 Inch. This makes your staircase 3” wide. If the building is very large (within a complex of a few square miles) this is reasonable. Otherwise you may run into some precision issues if you model anything small. An easy fix would be to go to the Utilities panel, click on More, choose Rescale World Units, click OK, click Rescale..., enter a Scale Factor of 12 to Affect Scene, and click on OK. Then to model using real-world dimensions, go to Customize > Units
Setup, and pick Metric or US Standard for your Display Unit Scale.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010