I’m trying to add a video to a plane using 3ds Max 2012. I’ve watched two videos showing how to do it, unfortunately they are using old versions of 3dsMax, and their instructions aren’t up to date.

I’ve made a plane, converted it to poly. I opened materials, found diffuse map in architectural, and clicked on bitmap. So I opened my Avi file. And what I believe what I am supposed to do now is drag from the circle to my plane. I see the video on my plane, but it is washed out gray. There is a box that says “diffuse color”, where this color seems to come from, but I can’t get rid of it.

Is there a thorough guide on adding video for the 2012 edition? I’m afraid by finding bits and pieces hear and there from different editions I’ve mucked something up.

Maybe you didn’t press the “show materials in viewport “ button in material editor. Are you using any codec compressed avi ? try something uncompressed, non codec version.

Probably best if you make an image sequence from your video file rather than plug in the video file directly. How big is the video?

From the sound of it, you’ve got show map in viewport checked.  Using an image sequence instead of an AVI file usually produces better results.  You mentioned using an Architectural material.  If this is correct, I’d strongly recommend using a Standard material instead.  Architectural materials can be problematic and they also take much longer to render if there is any degree of reflection on them.  And if you’re running a video, you won’t want any reflection on that surface as it will obscure the video.

Stephen