No its not a bug.
Standalone is still not functional at the moment.

God talk about slow download, i'm on a 50mbit connection and been at it for 11 minutes and only
edit 16mins 3091 of 3576 files

Done... 18 minutes but notices a spelling mistake the 'S' is missing on Start GameGuruMax

Also if you got to any of the walls with the gun in your hand your hand passes through all
walls... just a small bug report

That is pretty good, I think the servers were swamped Took me 45 minutes

Will MAX still be using classic physics or wicked engine physics-?
Would there be much difference, or that changes things up drastically?

Is terrain nodes and grass in yet? How about water-- how is that looking?

Wicked uses Bullet engine physics, same as GG. (and almost everyone else for that matter)

Pretty much the same as you last saw in the streams, Not much more done on that.

No AV issues, using Standard Windows 10 security.
Tiny Installer downloaded in 42 seconds
Updater installed and downloaded in 3 minutes and 27 seconds
Run MAX opened in 7.3 seconds
added Preview ORB ran test left it running for 36 minutes no CPU spikes or blips memory clean no issues.

I have a Virgin Business 1GB connection

One thing i did notice is i need to update the Preview ORBs the texturing could be a lot better i will update them this week

No that has not been worked on yet, there has only been minor fixes added. The majority of the work was related to the UI and some features that go with that, some editing keys have finally been added and the tiny installer test.

Importing of an entity with multiple materials is still broken (still has not been worked on, I take it). When you import a model that has more than one material, you can use a drop down to select the material you want and add textures (normal maps, AO, etc.) to each as you please or assign a separate color to each. That's fine. But when you save it and then drag the entity into the scene, none of the materials are saved. If you then select the entity in the scene and go to edit its properties, the drop-down to select the different materials is not present, so you can only make changes to whatever is the top most material.

Importing entities with only one material works fine.

The slider to adjust the size of an imported entity does not seem to work correctly when using CTRL+Click to enter a specific number. For example, one entity came in about twice larger than I wanted (due to the size I had exported it from Blender), so I used CTRL+Click to enter 0.5 as the size (since the slider said 1.0). Instead of the entity going to half the size, it became so huge that the entire scene was inside the entity. Only by sliding the slider could I get it to resize properly when going below 1.0. But using the slider makes it difficult to get an exact size.

Yes, I'm having issues too about an entity with multiple materials, therefore multiple textures, and you can edit just one.

You can edit more then one.

This is a single mesh, not 3 meshes as max would have you believe.I would simply export my model load it up in lithunwrap, assign the textures export to obj, open max, use the import tool and it automatically picks up the textures I don't even have to assign them.
So you have to make sure the model references the textures correctly and is assigned.

Will also add invest in fragmotion it also works well, as it allows adding the texture references, when importing it only has the one texture layer, the most top one, you have to physically add the other texture references as well. Fragmotion is perfect for this, Once you have added the additional texture layers, gameguru automatically picks them up, no issue.

When you initially import, yes, you can. But AFTER you've imported the model, you cannot. If you add the entity to your Level Entities palette, drag it into your scene, select it, and then go to Edit Properties, there is NO drop-down to select the different materials. Therefore, if you want or need to change materials later, after importing, you cannot.

Not sure if Multi-Texturing is what Max is aiming for.
Sure it will let you import it and place it on the map but any more than that ... I dunno ?

Why not? If you have a PBR workflow, then multiple materials is imperative. If you have a model of a chest, for example, with shiny metallic bands and dull, old wood, you would use two materials to get this to light properly in PRB. If MAX is not aiming for multi-materials on a single entity, then it is totally missing the boat when it comes to PBR implementation.

have to agree with Argent_Arts, multi materials is essential

The recommeded approach for Classic and Max is to have your textures in a single UV map.

This is more efficient for the engine and for memory. Once you start using PBR your talking about having 4 or 5 textures for all the different stages and multiple texture is just going to increase that exponentially.

Its better to get in the habit of creating a single UV whenever possible.

.
That's my point.
Just to mention one example, scenario:
I have some mesh with one pbr texture for the body and another one for the illuminate edges, here I've 1 mesh with 2 textures, I should be able to edit them separately because the settings are not the same. I've tried this scenario unwrapping it in just one texture and making the I.dds file to get the illum, then if I try to illuminate it via emissive slider, GGmax illuminates the whole mesh, so not 1 texture here is not one option, at least no atm.

For classic yes, for max it is a whole other story, it is multi textures friendly and you could go nuts with little or no impact. Other engines like unreal and unity support it and wicked engine is no different it was coded with that in mind it even supports vertex painting by default and that is what we essentially have with the terrain, vertex painting multiple texture on a single mesh and does it much better then classic any ways.

Don't take my word for it came directly from Lee in a email, you can ask him in the next broadcast as well.Yes there would be reasonable limits but it wouldn't strain performance like in classic at all.

No you can have pbr shading on a single texture map there is no need for that some thing like a chest needs two textures, it can all be done on a single texture, if you use some thing like substance painter or quixel it is pretty straightforward. Converting older none pbr textures is also pretty standard if you use some thing like materialize, it is slightly less accurate then what you would get from substance and quixel, but you can isolate color in the albedo pretty well.

Multi textures is suited to large objects like a building which not normally fit on a single atlas texture if it is complex enough.There really is no need that some thing simple as a chest needs to be multitextured to make use of PBR shading it can all be done on a single texture and UV map.

It is also the reason why you have texture rendering in blender and max ect. You design your object apply multiple textures, create the uvmap and render the texture and object with a single material.You plug in the normals,specular, metalness, roughness even ao for each texture and it would render that as well to a single texture file and UV map.PBR works perfectly fine on a single uvmap and software used to create these pbr maps is perfectly able to isolate the colors that you would like to metalness or roughness.

Multi textures in the case of classic and max is for special entities that need it.

to add max uses 3 textures, albedo normal and surface, sure the surface texture is made out of 3 textures, however it still uses less memory and resources then separate ao metalness and roughness would have.

Thanks for the explanation

This has nothing to do with PBR and mutli-materials. You can definitely have a single UV map for one model and still use multiple materials. Materials is more than textures. It also information for the metalness of an area of a model, how reflective that metal is, does the area emit light, normal maps, height maps, and more. You may want to have differences between areas of a model. Again, think of a single model with a single UV map, but it has areas that are dull wood and areas that are shiny metal. You would definitely want to use different PBR materials for each so that each surface will react correctly to lighting in the level.

However, many game developers and professional game models will use more than one material on a single model. It's all about what you're after. For example, when creating a model (for another engine) that allows for Parallax Occlusion mapping, you can use that for creating "decals" for models that create very convincing "3D" elements, even when projected onto a simple plane. The Parallax Occlusion elements will need their own materials for a variety of reasons.

Take this sci-fi chest:



All the shiny parts (like the circular piece toward the top-right) are created on a simple plane. It's not modeled. But it appears 3D due to parallax occlusion mapping. To do this properly, and to set it up correctly in a game engine, like Unreal, you need a separate material for the parallax occlusion mapping parts than you would for the rest of the model.

So, the above is not a complex model, but it requires multiple materials.

There are other reasons for simple models to use more than one material, too. It is a part of a standard PBR workflow.

EDIT -

I forgot to mention that multiple materials on a single object allow you to also affect a specific material via code to change it (for whatever reasons you might want to) or even animate specific material parameters. Being able to use multiple materials on a single object opens many doors that would be closed or made more difficult if only one material is allowed per object.

Maybe sometimes GGMax will support that sort of map, such as parallax, edges, cavity, etc.

Sometimes I model a compound mesh that is a set of meshes forming one mesh, with their own UV map each one (too complex/detailed to fit in one texture file), anyway there is more than one texture and I just want to edit those texture separately in GGMax, because each one has its own settings, but GGMax treats this mesh as just one mesh with just one texture in the editor, and after importing it.
Well, honestly I don't use the import feature, at least till being able to import a mesh with animations, I'm old school, just create a mesh folder in entiybank and I take this folder as a working folder when done I make the fpe file and go to GG/GGMax to test it.

And you can paint the exact same details using a normal which look exactly the same and does the same there is more then one way to skin a cat.


Back in the olden days you would render a bake from a high res/high polygon model right in the model editor most still support that, new shaders and such has made it obsolete for the most part unless you looking at doing physical renders and not game assets.Besides that unreal 5 has made Parallax Occlusion obsolete even having to spend hours painting normals obsolete with their new rendering techniques you can pop in your high res 1million polygon model without hassle and literally thousands of the same 1 million polygon models without hassle.

Painting normals and Parallax Occlusion is old hat.

Yes can you use more then one material sure, what ever floats your boat, do you have to, no, can you get the same result with other methods yes.Parallax Occlusion isn't cheap to render like multitextures it is special use case. Should max support it? No it won't, the target system requirements is far too weak for some thing like this.

There are several things lee is looking at and researching and ideas nothing concrete.

Well my download worked, but it died about 3 times (probably my internet in fairness) Ended up leaving overnight to get the last bit. But no issues with it getting stuck, just failed a few times, the internet dropped completely twice; not sure if that was the provider or my router overheating.

Still seems fairly similar to the last version I tried. Terrain is still not working with even mild blips in height and sometimes you bounce up and down like mad for no reason, or sink slowly down like you're in quicksand.

Performance is also not good dropping to 30 fps with just a few trees in the scene in places. It's definitely a little slow with trees again by the looks. My GPU is not clocked high, in fact its a little low, I tend to find overclocking a waste of time in the main and I defo don't want my card to fail in the current GPU climate, but I think for such an empty scene this does not bode well.


Getting missing textures when I save the level also.

When I saved this I lost a couple of textures; re-loading I lost all of them.

I know usage bugs were not asked for here, but I thought I may as well post them along with the install test. A way to go I think still.

Edit - Oh @syncromesh. My internet is mega slow and it failed a few times, so it may be it didn't change on yours, or you missed it as it was faster. When your waiting hours to download easier to spot these things rather than the 11 mins I heard up above!

No, not the same thing. You simply cannot obtain the same level of depth/height with normal mapping alone that you can with parallax occlusion mapping. You do know that you use normal mapping WITH parallax occlusion mapping, right? It's not one or the other.



Actually, yes, you have to in some situations. And, actually, no, you cannot get the same results with other methods. One of the main reasons to use multiple materials in modern games is TRIM SHEETS. Trim sheets save you a ton of resources because they are used over and over again across many objects. In order for this to be done, the objects they are on will need multiple materials applied - one for the trim sheet part they use and one (or at least one) for the rest of the model. You cannot do trim sheets without multiple materials.



Like any effect, you have to use it wisely. It's a trade-off between saving geometry or the minor hit you take with parallax occlusion mapping. Old hat or not, it's still used in many modern games. Your example of using normals is not at all the same in that you can get a heck of a lot more depth with parallax occlusion mapping than you ever could with normals alone. You use normals along with parallax occlusion mapping, not instead of.



No. Not the case at all. Even so, parallax occlusion mapping was a simple example where, yes, you'd need a separate material for it to do what I showed in the example (and while you can't see it properly in the screen shot, the depth there could NEVER be achieved via normal maps). But regardless of whether MAX ever supports parallax occlusion mapping, that has nothing to do with whether it should properly support multiple materials per entity. Which is why I gave the example of trim sheets. Say what you want about trim sheets. Call them "old" if you like or whatever, but trim sheets are used consistently in modern games of every kind - sci-fi, fantasy (medieval), modern settings, etc. They are essential to having great detail while saving resources.

In any case, I don't know why you are so opposed to MAX properly supporting multiple materials. It already does on import. That's not by accident. The Wicked Engine does, which MAX uses. There's a reason The Wicked Engine supports multiple materials. There's a reason Unreal, Unity, S2, and virtually ever other modern game engine on the planet does. It's needed for a variety of reasons and is used in modern game making. There is no reason for MAX to not properly support it.

@Argent: I would like to understand your side of the argument better but your screenshot of the sci-fi chest isn't pulling through. Can you upload it to your post or fix the link please?

AE

@Avenging Eagle - Interesting. I can see it when I scroll to my post and Wizard was able to see it (since he commented on it). So, I don't think the problem is the link.

@Avenging Eagle - Here's another screen shot/composite:



Let me know if this shows up. It's not the same as the other, but shows the effect from various angles. The top shows the flat planes the parallax occlusion affect is applied to.

But trim sheets are a better example. I should have brought that up first, instead of parallax occlusion mapping.

Gotta say that from my experience, being able to use multiple textures on objects is really useful. I can't comment on the technicalities as I am not an expert with 3D art, but it's obvious that having several textures to texture an object will allow for far more detail than just one. I would say it is mostly useful for set piece items where you just need more detail than one single texture can provide; specifically with large items. If you have say, Talos stomping about, it will look way better with multiple textures than just one, otherwise it will look pixelated up close.

Nice to have and dependant on the engine as to how it copes. I wouldn't recommend using lots of stuff with several 4k or higher textures, but it's definitely useful for some things. Although at the moment, given my very basic tests, Max is not going to like it unless you have a monster video card.
Edit - @AgentArts your image is not working for me either. Just a thumbnail that does nothing

I get this error as soon as i want to download max.
File list failed to parse

Says who ? You ?, you must be mistaken ?

Quickly whipped up in photoshop , using alpha brush masks. Taken directly from the top, no clever angles to improve or any thing, so no, there is more then one way to skin a cat.

And you did not obtain the same level of depth. The angles of my screen shots, of course, were to show that depth from various views. Nothing cleaver about it. In any case, you can talk about parallax occlusion mapping all you like. It seems you don't know what you're talking about here as you can develop even more depth with parallax occlusion mapping, if needed, than what I've shown in my example. But none of that matters. Take parallax occlusion mapping off the table. As we all know, it's not currently in MAX. As I'd pointed out, it's not the only reason (by far) multiple materials are used in games. Again, trim sheets. There are various other reasons, too. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, professional game developers use multiple materials to get the effects they like in-game. Sure, they have to balance out the benefits against draw-calls and the like. But when used appropriately, such as with trim sheets, the benefit is quite high.

For your amusement, some further parallax occlusion mapping examples:

@Argent_Arts
when you are linking the pictures are you using HTTP or HTTPS because i too cannot see your images in Edge but can in IE11
i don't mean to derail but just letting you know people cannot see your avatar or images if they are using the Windows 10 browser

@GraPhix

I am using the Image button and filling it in. In the end, it looks like this:

unfortunately HTTP will not resolve on Edge browsers, Microsoft in their wisdom force HTTPS so for your images to show in edge (default windows 10 browser) you need to host on HTTPS sorry

this includes your Avatar too

example i downloaded from your site and uploaded here:

If you right click on them and do "open in new tab" then they show up for me.

yes they will but please remember if it was a malicious site you would open yourself to 'auto' download anything from said site!

i know Argent Arts is not a bad guy LOL but anyone could hide/execute anything in the image.

This is just a FYI it is not saying anything is bad about Argent Arts images !!!!

@ synchromesh yes m8 its the tiny version you need to be in developer tools(you need to fiddle around a little to get there) to get the structure editor if you look I've placed some flooring and bottom left shows the structure editor in use.
so basically its go to settings>developer and structure editor is under developer tools check second image

Using Chrome here and same issue. Can't see any of the example pics you posted @Agent_Arts. Might be worth uploading here directly in future, rather than linking to an image site (if that's what you are doing). It's way easier now than it used to be to embed images into your post. No faffing about copying links, just upload and click embed

Because I am not having any luck with copying the files to different drives and updating, decided to do a new install on the c drive, very painful!

Dude you misunderstand, iam not saying it isn't better, I am saying standard PBR shading is nothing to frown upon . More then one way to skin a cat, with max and the low system requirements, it is the best we have to work with, and with a good lighting system it is pretty decent and generally happy with, better effects would never be shunned, but it is what is, for now at least.

So best to get cracking and make the best use of what we have

Ahh right .. I was able to edit the Cellar demo but to actually find and select Structure Editor from the UI was the problem which is why i wondered if you were on the previous build.

Edit .. Checked and your spot on .. Great find , Totally missed that

As far as PBR and multiple materials - here is the crux of it (for me, at least) - PBR's intended purpose is to create a material that is displayed correctly no matter the lighting of a scene, be it an outdoor scene in bright sunlight or inside a room that is dimly lit by a candle. A PBR material should look "physically" correct in all lighting situations. That's its intent. To do this, the end-user sets a variety of parameters. Let's use Metallic as an example. A metallic setting of 1.0 means the material behaves fully like a metallic surface. A setting of 0.0 means it does not in any way. Now, take that basic information and create a basic knife - stainless steel blade with a dull, wooden handle. You'd not want to use one material on this model. If you set Metallic to 1.0, then the blade will look correct in all lighting situations, but the wooden handle would not. If you'd set Metallic to 0.0, then the handle would look correct, but not the blade. The way around this is to create two materials - one for the blade and one for the wooden handle. When you do this, you get a single item that reacts physically correctly in all lighting situations. In this manner, PBR is being used correctly. And it's a good reason why you might need multiple materials on a single model ... even a simple model, like a knife.

EDIT - BTW, the Metallic setting is not for how shiny an object is. You can still create a dull metal that is not very reflective. There are other parameters that can be set to determine how an object reflects light. So, you could, for example, have Metallic set to 0.0, but Roughness set to 0.0. This would give you an extremely reflective surface. But it would be more like shiny plastic than metal and it would react that way in different lighting situations/environments.

It won't even open for me.

I deleted the other alpha build completely, I've let Max pick the location in the C drive ( didn't work).

I picked another location on my D drive ( where I want it to go), still didn't work.

It does nothing when I try to launch it

i would just like to say there maybe some confusion about Materials and Textures they are not the same a Texture is made up of several different materials, for example i use Quixel Suite and apply my materials to my asset Quixel then bakes all these materials to a texture and separate's the composition of the material into its relevant slot, so my texture has a Diffuse Texture for the colours, Metalness texture for the metals AND non metals (uses greyscale to determine the composition) Gloss/Roughness texture for the light reflectance of the asset be it dull or shiny , Normal/PO/Height maps basically fall in the same category they add the 'Third Dimension' to your asset so a flat surface uses light to look 3D rather than 2D and of Course AO which helps the normal look more natural by generating shadows these are usually static.
PBR light probes eliminate AO by using dynamic shadows which are generated using the above texture that was created.

Now a model that uses more than one texture is called 'Multi Material' by some which is confusing because 99% of textures are more than one material multi textured models usually come with more than 1 UV map these are known as UDIMS more used in the film industry than gaming but they have been used in some games.

I think the Normals are better in MAX than Classic but Height maps would give the same effect as Parallax with less overhead, so in a way you are both right.

For me, I am talking about materials, not textures. Which is why I brought up metallic and roughness. These are material settings. Sure, they can pump out the appropriate textures for use, but you can only set one metallic per material. It's either 1.0 or it's something else ... not both or all. So, if you need both, you need more than one material.

Now i am confused LOL i am not sure what you are trying to achieve with 'Materials' for instance i made a chrome bar stool a while ago it has 2 materials and 1 texture but i can adjust the materials Metalness and Gloss individually so the wooden seat can either look dull matt or glossy by adjusting my texture sliders so i can make it look as though the varnish is worn or that there is stains on the seat just by adjusting metalness and gloss.

Metallic is not about being glossy or dull. It's about behaving like metal in light (or lack thereof). Roughness is for how smooth or not (thus, how reflective or not). The difference between a shiny metal and shiny plastic is the shiny metal has a Metallic of 1 while the shiny plastic has a Metallic of 0 (because plastic is not metal at all). PBR, or Phyiscally Based Rendering, is all about how lighting is represented on a surface. There will always be overlap. In some instances, a shiny piece of plastic may look just like a shiny piece of metal. But most of the time, the two materials will react a bit differently to light. So, while you can definitely get similar results with one material, if you want a metal to always function as a metal, no matter the lighting, no matter if it's rough or smooth or somewhere in-between, then you want its Metallic set properly. Plastic should have it's metallic set to 0 (it's not metal in the least). Some instructors teach that metals should always have Metallic set to 1.0 and never any lesser number, like 0.9, etc. Why? Because metal is always metal. You set the rest up via specular, roughness, etc. to get the type of metal, age, etc.