These are messages that appear in the Possible problems converting scene to Shockwave 3D* window, if you have selected the Enable Authoring Checks checkbox in the Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options dialog box.
These warnings refer to parts of the scene that may not export to Shockwave 3D format as expected. If this happens, try the fix using 3ds max 4, and re-export.
In 3ds max 4* you can create a scene where an object rotates over a large angle of about 360 degrees, using only two keyframes: one at the start of the rotation and one at the end. This type of animation may export incorrectly to Shockwave 3D format, however, with a model rotating 180 degrees in the intended direction, and then rotating the remaining 180 degrees back to its starting orientation. This is most noticeable when Sampling Interval is set to a value (50, for example) that is large enough to capture the entire rotation (one lasting 100 frames, for example).
Fix: Add intermediate keyframes to the rotation, one keyframe for about every 90 degrees of rotation made by the model.
Animation compression saves Shockwave 3D file space and shortens streaming and load times for a scene. However, when the animation quality control is lowered below 10%, the model may vibrate or jitter.
Fix: Increase Animation quality setting.
High geometry compression levels save Shockwave 3D file space. However, increasing compression lowers the quality of the exported geometry. At high compression with geometry quality settings at values below about 10%, models can become crumpled or wrinkled.
Fix: Increase Geometry quality setting.
Texture compression saves Shockwave 3D file space and, for some scenes, shortens streaming and load times. However, if the compression is below about 10%, texture detail can be lost.
Fix: Increase Texture quality setting.
Changes to a texture's orientation must be done with the UVW coordinates applied to a mesh by the UVW Modifier. Rotating a texture in the 3ds max 4 Material Editor using the Coordinates rollout is not supported in the export. This message indicates that the texture may not have the expected orientation in the Shockwave 3D scene.
Fix: Reset all UVW settings in the MAX Material Editor to the defaults, and make all UVW coordinate changes using a UVW modifier.
It is important that all Shockwave 3D files use the same scale, especially if you use Shockwave 3D files provided by third parties, or if your models are made available to third parties. If units in 3ds max 4 have been changed from the default in inches, this warning appears.
Fix: Keep the default units in inches. See Scale Models to Inches.
3ds max 4 represents directional lights either by a tube of light or as a light of infinite extent coming from a single direction. Shockwave 3D supports only directional lights of infinite extent. To make sure the correct directional light is exported, select the Overshoot checkbox in the Directional Parameters rollout for directional lights.
Fix: Select the Overshoot checkbox in the Directional Parameters rollout for directional lights.
All objects in Shockwave 3D must have unique names. If two cameras have the same name in 3ds max 4, only one of them will export to Shockwave 3D. This message warns you that this has occurred.
Fix: Rename one of the cameras so no two cameras have the same name.
All objects in Shockwave 3D must have unique names. If two groups have the same name in 3ds max 4, only one of them will export to Shockwave 3D. This message warns you that this has occurred.
Fix: Rename one of the groups so no two groups have the same name.
All objects in Shockwave 3D must have unique names. If two lights have the same name in 3ds max 4, only one of them will export to Shockwave 3D. This message warns you that this has occurred.
Fix: Rename one of the lights so no two lights have the same name.
All objects in Shockwave 3D must have unique names. If two materials have the same name in 3ds max 4, only one of them will export to Shockwave 3D. This message warns you that this has occurred.
Fix: Rename one of the materials so no two materials have the same name.
All objects in Shockwave 3D must have unique names. If two models have the same name in 3ds max 4, only one of them will export to Shockwave 3D. This message warns you that this has occurred.
Fix: Rename one of the meshes so no two have the same name. (Bones are not supported in this version of the Exporter.)
All objects in Shockwave 3D must have unique names. If two textures have the same name in 3ds max 4, only one of them will export to Shockwave 3D. This message warns you that this has occurred. As a result, some of the models will be covered with unexpected textures.
Fix: Rename one of the textures so no two textures have the same name.
The Shockwave 3D exporter collapses scenes. Whenever this happens, all 3ds max 4 objects are collapsed into a single object in Shockwave 3D and lose all animation that is applied to them, except for the object (a MAX group, or mesh) that is at the highest level in the hierarchy. This message indicates that animation attached to all the children of this highest-level object will be lost.
Fix: Reauthor the scene so that none of the objects to be merged have animation on them.
Shockwave 3D supports animation only on meshes attached to meshes. Animation of groups (with no meshes as direct children), lights, and cameras is not exported.
Fix: To animate lights and cameras, make them the child of a small mesh marked as invisible, and then apply the animation to the invisible mesh. Groups will only animate when they are collapsed with meshes that are their immediate children.
To maintain a real-time frame rate, Shockwave 3D dynamically simplifies all objects in the scene based on their distance from the camera, their complexity, and the desired frame rate. Large models with over 10,000 polygons often require accelerated graphics hardware to display at full resolution in real-time, with smaller and older units rarely rendering models at full resolution. As a result fine details on these large objects may not be rendered unless the model is specially authored.
Fix: Simplify the model as much as possible. This will make it less prone to dynamic simplification at run time, and preserve its finer features in more situations.
The preferred Shockwave 3D unit of size is inches. A model that is 100,000 units wide is almost two miles wide when expressed in inches. It is unlikely to work well with other Shockwave 3D content. Use care when you author a model this large for use by a third party, or get one this large from an outside source. When models become approximately a million inches wide, the Shockwave 3D renderer starts to have problems displaying parts of their meshes. If you need to create extremely large objects, we recommend that you miniaturize them in 3ds max 4, making them 1/10th or 1/100th their real size, before trying to export.
Fix: Scale down the model.
If you scale a character that has been fit to a biped and bound with the Physique modifier, remove Physique, separate the mesh from the skeleton, rescale each, re-fit the skeleton to the mesh, and then reapply Physique.
Note: The mesh should be rescaled either at the Sub-Object level (selecting all polygons) or by applying an Xform modifier and scaling the gizmo. This changes the mesh geometry. If this is not done, the scale operation only transforms the mesh in MAX's world space, which may cause problems on export.
If you choose to scale the environment to match the character size, you must rescale the geometry at a sub-object level. If the environment is composed of many small particles found in collision detection scenarios, you can select all the environment objects, group them, apply an Xform modifier, and scale the gizmo. When the scaling is done, ungroup the selection, otherwise, collision detection treats the entire environment as one large object.
Textures cannot be applied to a model if the model does not have texture coordinates. Textures coordinates are created for a model when the Generate Mapping Coords checkbox is selected.
Fix:
Select the Generate
Mapping Coords checkbox for the 3ds max 4 primitive
Apply a material to a primitive
and click the Show Map Viewport
button in the Material Editor
Render the scene containing the model
Apply a UVW Map modifier to the model
This message indicates that multiple UVW Map modifiers have been applied to the model and these modifiers have created UVW mapping coordinates in more than one map channel. The Shockwave 3D exporter handles only models that have a single layer of texture coordinates assigned to a single map channel.
Fix: Remove all but one texture coordinate layer.
This message indicates that the model will look different in Shockwave 3D because of its use of the Gouraud algorithm to render the more advanced shaders, such as the Multi-Layer or Metal shaders. Only the Blinn and Phong shaders are exported.
Fix: Use the default Blinn shader.
Shockwave 3D supports only circular spotlights. This message indicates that a non-circular spotlight is in the scene. The exporter will convert the non-circular spotlight to a circular one.
Fix: None needed; or, use only circular spotlights.
(3ds max 4 Bones are not supported for export in this version of the Exporter. Do not use Bones in animation.)
Shockwave 3D requires a skeleton to be a single, continuous entity. When a collection of 3ds max 4 nodes are collapsed into a model consisting of a mesh and a skeleton, the top-level node in this collection must be either a dummy or a group. Meshes are only allowed to be "leaf nodes" in the skeletal hierarchy.
This message indicates that a bone has been parented to a mesh in 3ds max
4. As a result, it will not be considered part of the model's skeleton, and
any animation of that bone and the meshes it controls will be lost.
Note: This will, however, result in the creation of a separate model in Shockwave 3D that contains only the skeleton and any meshes it controls that are children of the grouped bone.
The Shockwave 3D exporter supports only the 3ds max 4 Standard and Multi/Sub-Object materials, which are containers for other MAX materials. This message indicates that non-Standard 3D Studio materials, such as Blend, Composite, and Top/Bottom have been used. The exporter extracts material properties only from Standard materials, and will assign default material properties to models that use non-Standard materials.
Fix: Use the 3ds max 4 standard materials.
This message indicates that a texture's size has been reduced for export to the Shockwave 3D format because of the setting in the Texture Size Limits section of the Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options dialog box. This may result in some distortions in Shockwave 3D when this texture is viewed using certain hardware, but image quality must be weighed against the image download time.
Fix: None needed; or, reset texture size limits.
In addition to static images, 3ds max 4 allows you to use QuickTime and AVI files as textures. These movies can be played back synchronized to the 3ds max 4 frame rate. Shockwave 3D does not support movies as textures and will export only a single frame of the movie applied as a texture. Movies must be simulated in Shockwave 3D using Lingo, with a sequence of separate textures that are replaced in the Shockwave 3D shader every frame.
Fix: Don't use animated texture; or, export each frame of animation as a separate texture.
Animating material colors, such as the diffuse color, opacity value, or specular level, cannot be captured in the exported Shockwave 3D file.
Fix: Material properties may be animated in Shockwave 3D using Lingo.
Volumetric effects from 3ds max 4 such as fog, hair, or fire are not exported. Some of these can be simulated within Director.
Fix: Fog can be created, and fire and hair may be simulated by the creative use of texture layers or particle systems, using Director.
This message indicates the use of an unsupported modifier on a model. While the tests which detect unsupported modifiers are not comprehensive, they do report those modifiers that may cause the most unexpected problems.
Fix: Reauthor scene without the unsupported modifier.
The Shockwave 3D exporter supports only a few of the many types of nodes that can be part of a MAX scene. Nodes that don't make sense in a real-time 3D engine, for example, true two-dimensional objects like lines, are not supported.
This message may appear when exporting very small objects of supported types. Triangles of models below a certain size are considered to have zero area and are not exported. This can result in part of the model not appearing and the creation of visual artifacts when the model is scaled up. In the worst case, the entire model is discarded and replaced with a non-rendering group node in the scene.
Note: The size limit on triangles is difficult to quantify. A sphere with a radius of 0.004 units and four segments will export successfully. A sphere with a radius of 0.003 units and four segments will not export, because none of its triangles has an area larger than the minimum area allowed for triangles.
Fix: Reauthor scene without the unsupported node
This message indicates that 3ds max 4 advanced meshes may have their normals pointing in the wrong direction, or their orientation incorrect when exported. These meshes are not supported.
Fix: Make sure that all models are originally authored from MAX primitives or polygonal meshes. Converting a Patch or a NURB to an Editable Mesh may not be sufficient without additional cleanup, including, fixing normals so that they all point in the same direction.
The 3ds max 4 Skin modifier is not supported.
Fix: Use Character Studio.
3ds max 4 rendering effects, such as lens flare, film grain, and depth of field are not supported by the Shockwave 3D exporter. Some, but not all of these effects can be simulated with Lingo.
Fix: Not needed; or use Lingo to create the effect.
The Shockwave 3D exporter supports only textures that use an Explicit Map Channel mapping, textures that are used as a Texture map to a surface (as opposed to an Environ map), and map channel 1. Use of any other settings may result in unexpected results.
Fix: Use map channel 1 with Explicit Map Channel and Texture mapping selected.
The Shockwave 3D exporter supports only bitmap textures and 2D procedural textures. Other types of 3ds max 4 textures, such as 3D procedural textures and compositors, are not supported. The effects produced by some of these unsupported texture types can be simulated by the use of texture layers with Lingo. In addition, you will get this message if you assign a texture to one of the map channels ,like the Bump channel, that the exporter does not support.
Fix: Use a 2D procedural texture, or a bitmap texture with map channel 1 selected.
The Shockwave 3D exporter does not support any mesh vertices that are controlled by (weighted to) more than nine bones. Only the weightings for the first nine bones that control the vertex are counted, the rest are ignored.
Note: Bones are not supported for export.
This message appears when the Scenegraph hierarchy option in the Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options dialog box is not selected. This checkbox controls whether or not the parent-child hierarchy between all geometry, light, group, and camera resources are written to the Shockwave 3D file. The scenegraph hierarchy is the glue that binds most of the scene assets in the Shockwave 3D file (.w3d). If this option is cleared, only shader, texture, model, and motion resources will be written to the .w3d file. All the other information that specifies how objects exist in the scene, how the scene is laid out, how the scene is lit, and how the scene is viewed will be missing. This means that the contents of the .w3d file will not render in Shockwave 3D. For this reason, clear this option only when exporting libraries of animations, objects, or texture maps.
Note that the setting of this option is remembered from one export to another, which is why you may get this warning when you did not actually intend to export with this option disabled.
Fix: Not needed; or select the Scenegraph hierarchy option in the Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options dialog box and re-export.
This messages appears when the Shaders option in the Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options dialog is not selected. Shaders are the highest-level entities that describe surface properties. They specify a collection of material properties (for example, diffuse color, opacity, and self-illumination) and bitmap textures that, together, represent a specific surface. If this option is not selected, shaders will not be written to the .w3d file. As a result, any models that made use of these shaders will no longer have the expected surface properties, and there will be no connection between any objects and any bitmapped textures or material properties. Clear this option if you intended to use the resulting .w3d file as a library of material and textures, but not when exporting a complete renderable scene.
Note that the setting of this option is remembered from one export to another, which is why you may get this warning when you did not actually intend to export with this option disabled.
Fix: Not needed; or select the Shaders option in the Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options dialog box and reexport.
Some modifiers in 3ds max 4 are allowed to change the number of faces or vertices in a model. If one of these modifiers is above Physique in the model's modifier stack, the Shockwave 3D exporter cannot export the model, because the number of vertices seen in the model by Physique is different from that seen at the top of the modifier stack. This message warns you of this problem, and explains why the model is not visible. To preserve the scene hierarchy, however, a dummy object with the same name as the model the will be placed into the Shockwave 3D scene at the proper location in the scene hierarchy.
Fix: Reauthor the model so that any modifiers in the modifier stack above Physique do not change the number or ordering of the vertices in the model.
*See asterisked (*) statement at Legal Information © 2001 Intel Corporation.