I’ve had this effect in max for a while now… I’ll use a simplistic example.

I create a box and apply a material that has a noise map on it.
I click “show map in viewport”, and the box shows the correct map applied to it as per the uvw.
However, when i hit render, the scale is different!
By a scale of 10 it seems.

I.e. if i set the noise map to size 10. it will render as though i set it to 1.

Why is this happening?

I’m rendering with 3ds Max 2009 SP1 x64, vray 1.50 sp3a.

Many procedural maps inside of max will provide the incorrect result when you hit the Show Map In Viewport. I wrote a script to get around the problem…

http://www.neilblevins.com/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

texmapPreview. What it basically does is a super quick render of any part of your map chain. While not as nice as seeing the result in the viewport, at least it’s guaranteed to be correct, and is way faster than doing a complete render.

- Neil