Objects in 3ds Max have Polygon Shading or Normal problems, appear "fuzzy" or render incorrectly

Autodesk Support

Oct 8, 2023

Products and versions covered

Issue:

Objects in 3ds Max Shaded viewports have Polygon Shading or Face Normal problems and may render incorrectly.

They may appear with jagged black shadows or translucent edges, appear to have inverted Face/Polygon Normals, or appear to become progressively blurry in Shaded viewports.

Causes:

Some scene objects or object elements (such as vertices, edges or faces, may have become detached from their original objects and located very far from the 3ds Max world space center (XYZ 0,0,0). They may also be scaled too large or small in the scene.

This can cause mathematical precision issues where 3ds Max cannot draw the objects properly in a Shaded viewport. In addition, pressing the Zoom Extents button may cause all geometry to disappear in Orthographic viewports. This issue is most prevalent when importing objects as .OBJ or .FBX files exported from other 3D modeling programs, including AutoCAD.

Solution:

If objects are not displaying correctly in 3ds Max Shaded viewports, or disappear when pressing the 'Zoom Extents All' button, try the following steps:
 

Check the graphics driver version

Go to the website of your graphics card manufacturer (such as Nvidia, AMD, or Intel), then search for, download and install the latest driver for your graphics card.
 

Isolate and identify "Problem" Objects

  1. Click the Toggle Scene Explorer button from the top Toolbar to make sure the Scene Explorer menu is available.
  2. Press Control-A to select all scene elements (objects, cameras, lights).
  3. In the Command Panel > Display, click Hide Selected.
  4. Now from the Scene Explorer, select and unhide approximately half the elements in the scene (the first half in alphabetical or numerical order).
  5. See if the Shaded Viewports issue occurs with these objects. (If so, skip to Step #9.)
  6. If not, press Zoom Extents All to see if the objects disappear in Orthographic viewports.
  7. If neither of the above happens, unhide the second half of the scene elements and repeat the above process.
  8. If one half of the scene elements seems to contain the "problem" objects, hide one-half of these objects, and repeat the above process. The goal is to keep cutting down the number of scene elements which might be causing the issues until the problem objects are isolated.
  9. Once the specific "problem" object or objects have been identified, hide everything in the scene except for those objects.


Fix the objects

From the Scene Explorer, select the first "problem" object and do the following:
  1. If it's not integral to the scene, delete it. If this is true of the other "problem" objects, select them all and delete them as well.
  2. If these objects need to remain in the scene but were moved far away from the main group of scene objects, select each object, then right-click on the Transform button from the top Toolbar to bring up the Transform Type-in menu. If the values there are extremely large (tens of thousands of units at least), right-click the Absolute: World XYZ numerical fields to zero them out. This will move the selected object to world center (XYZ 0,0,0). Repeat as necessary with the remaining problem objects, then move them to the proper locations.
Objects far from World Center
Image: Spurious scene object identified as being located extraordinarily far from the 3ds Max world center.


Fix detached SubObject elements

If objects are already close to the world center but are still having display issues, subobject elements (such as vertices and edges) may have been cloned, detached, and moved too far from the original object.
To identify these issues:
  1. Select the problem object in the scene and from the Command Panel, go to Subobject: Vertex mode.
  2. In a Top or Side viewport, try to zoom in all the way to the object until it nearly fills the viewport.
  3. Select all vertices on the object, then press Control-I to invert the selection. This will select any vertices that may be detached and are "floating" very far away from the original source object.
  4. Now, press the Delete key to delete any spurious subobjects.
  5. If this doesn't fix the display issue (after testing with the Zoom Extents button), repeat the above process with SubObject: Edges, Faces and/or Polygons to delete any other elements that might be detached and present in the scene.
  6. Repeat the preceding process for any remaining problem objects and test the Viewport display again.
  7. Finally, if some scene objects appear to have inverted face normals, go to the Command Panel > Modify tab and apply an Edit Normals modifier to check the face Normal direction. They should all be pointing outwards.

Products:

3ds Max;

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