Here are 3 images of my problem http://lynx88.kingdomconquerors.com/prob1.jpg http://lynx88.kingdomconquerors.com/prob2.jpg http://lynx88.kingdomconquerors.com/prob3.jpg I honestly have no idea whatsoever could have caused this. All shapes I create have very odd shading and seem bright as if the ambient light was cranked, but all the settings are normal and the lighting is set to 1.0. There are no lights in my scene in the pictures. Also the material editor has *very* odd materials thrown in its slots as opposed to it's usual Material #1, #2, #3 etc. They are labeled "Architecture_3" Which I suppose came with my 3DS Max 9.. Also when viewing an object's properties, it's default color is split in the middle, I've never seen this before and I don't know why it's happening, but changing the color manually only makes the object appear as a very bright object of the selected color. I am using the deault scanline renderer, and I have reverted every setting I could back to default, but this problem is still around. This problem just showed up out of nowhere when I started 3DS the other day, I use it multiple times a day and I have never seen this behavior before. If anyone has ANY idea what is wrong I would greatly appreciate their help. System Specs: 3GB RAM, NVidia 8800 GS 612MB card with current drivers

I've tried changing to UI scheme to all 3 defaults available to me, but it wouldn't work :( I've resorted to turning back to Max 8 for now, atleast until the next time I reformat my drive anyway, atleast this way I can use all the older plugins that Max 9 can't use anymore anyway... Thanks for the reply, but since there is virtually no trace of anyone else having this problem on the net I'll just have to work with what I can.

Wow.... I really should have known that hehe... I should have tried that a looong time ago lol... I'll try it when I have time to reinstall max 9 again, if all else fails I'll just have to deal with Max 8 for now. Thanks for the info

Those shots look fairly normal to me, even though I haven't tried MAX 9 (It's out already!? I've barely had enough time to get used to 8!).

The brightness of the scene has to do with 2 things:

- First of all, go to Rendering->Environment and make sure the Ambient is set to black.
- Secondly, MAX has a default light that's enabled if you don't have a light in your scene. Once you add light it should be fine.

As for the materials, go to the material editor and do Utilities->Reset Material Editor Slots. That should fix it up.

And finally, I think the split color is Max9's way of telling you the color has been auto-assigned.

Nope :( I'm not THAT new :P I have tired placing lights and removing them, doesn't have any effect, and all environmental settings are normal *shoots computer* It just doesn't seem to want to work.... I also noticed that the shading and smoothing on the objects is very unsual and the edges seem to blend rather than pronounce, I checked the graphics drivers and tried moving to a different driver method, but I seem to be doomed to using 8 lol....