Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I receive an ‘Error code 126’ message?

Receiving an error message ‘Error code 126 - The specified module could not be found’ when you try to start 3ds Max with Flatiron indicates that you do not have Microsoft DirectX9c installed on the computer you’re trying to use Flatiron on.

You might already have DirectX10 or later installed on your computer. This is not a full replacement for version 9c. DirectX9 and DirectX10 can be installed next to each other on the same computer. You will not ‘downgrade’ or lose any DirectX10 capabilities by installing DirectX9c.

You can download Microsoft DirectX9c from the Microsoft download center. You can use either the Web installer or the full redistributable installer.

Why is the baked map completely black?

Check your selected bake element. Not all bake elements are compatible with all renderers.

For example V-Ray does not support the default render elements that the Scanline renderer and mental ray use. Instead, V-Ray brings its own render elements. Just pick those instead of the default render materials when you use V-Ray.

Using a V-Ray element with another renderer will fail accordingly.

Why do I get incorrect results when using the ‘Single Pass’ option?

Flatiron offers you the choice between two different texture baking modes: Single Pass baking (default) and Multi Pass baking. In Single Pass mode all picked objects are baked at the same time into the texture during a single render job. In Multi Pass mode the individual objects are baked in separate render jobs.

In most cases Single Pass is the preferred method because the required time for baking is significantly smaller while yielding the same results. But depending on the individual requirements and the utilized renderer there can be situations where Single Pass yields unexpected render results and Multi Pass might be the preferred solution. Refer to the chapter ‘Texture Baking Modes’ in the Flatiron User Manual for more details.

My baked textures are too dark or have the wrong color.

This happens when you have gamma correction enabled in your 3ds Max preferences and forgot to set the Flatiron bitmap output to the correct gamma value.

Solution: Override gamma settings of the bitmap with the real 1.0 value or turn off your gamma settings.

Why are some objects unwrapped unproportionally?

Some of the objects on an unwrapped map are much larger or smaller than they should be when considering the mesh surfaces in the scene. This is most likely the result of objects being imported from another application (AutoCAD, Maya, etc.). During the import the vertex scale was not set properly or the objects were rescaled by changing world space sizes.

To fix this, simply select the objects, go to the ‘Utilities’ panel and press ‘Reset X-Form’. This will set the object scaling to uniform defaults.

The same problem can be observed by applying a fractal noise texture to the objects: noise will look small on some and large on other objects even though they have similar sizes.

Why do bake results with V-Ray differ from the camera view render?

Make sure that you are not using the V-Ray Virtual Frame Buffer with color and gamma post processing. These effects don’t work with texture baking.

Also make sure that you are not using the light cache. Light cache works great in camera view but results in suboptimal bake results. You should instead switch to irradiance map or brute force for global illumination.

Why are maps not automatically merged during network render?

Flatiron will initiate the merge when it receives the message from the Backburner manager that the render job is completed. If Flatiron loses the connection due to network issues or because the 3ds Max instance from which the job was sent is closed it can never receive the message and will not complete the merge.

In these cases you can use the button ‘Manual Merge’ to complete the job when the network render is done. For more details about this, please refer to the chapter ‘Network Rendering’ in the Flatiron user manual.