Where is the material editor now - I hit M and nothing

[twiceroadsfool]

Ive always used older versions of 3dsMax, back when i was doing strictly autocad pline extrusion modeling, and rendering in Max or Viz. I used to hit *m* and the matieral editor came up, with the palette and everything else optioned for materials.

They have 8, and discreet, at my office. I went in it today, and hit M... Nothing. Hmm, i figured the command changed. So i went and selected material editor from the drop down. Nothing popped up. WTF??

Help me out here, im trying to fix some things in my rendering from Revit, and im getting pwn3d by this stoopid thing... waaaah.

[Steve_Bennett]

hmm... When I hit M on my keyboard, the Material Editor (ME) appears. Same for when I got to the rendering menu & choose it from the pull down. Same for when I click the material editor button shown in the attached image. Or maybe it's been minimized to the lower left hand corner of your window like what I highlighted in the attached image. Of course, when I hit the ME button again, it restored it from it's minimized spot in the lower left. If you've already checked all this, perhaps your screen resolution needs to be changed to a higher setting breifly to locate the ME & drag it closer to the upper left part of your screen. A reinstall of MAX might be in order too.

[twiceroadsfool]

hmm... When I hit M on my keyboard, the Material Editor (ME) appears. Same for when I got to the rendering menu & choose it from the pull down. Same for when I click the material editor button shown in the attached image. Or maybe it's been minimized to the lower left hand corner of your window like what I highlighted in the attached image. Of course, when I hit the ME button again, it restored it from it's minimized spot in the lower left. If you've already checked all this, perhaps your screen resolution needs to be changed to a higher setting breifly to locate the ME & drag it closer to the upper left part of your screen. A reinstall of MAX might be in order too.

Oh shoot... You just made me think of something. The guy before me was running a dual monitor setup, and im not. So the ME is probably way off in left field like you said. That has to be it. Im going by the office today becuase it was bothering me last night, so ill look in to that, lol.

Yeah, i tried the icon, the menu, and the command... All three make the icon depress, but nothing shows up. Hopefully its the monitor thing....

[Steve_Bennett]

Oh shoot... You just made me think of something. The guy before me was running a dual monitor setup, and im not. So the ME is probably way off in left field like you said. That has to be it. Im going by the office today becuase it was bothering me last night, so ill look in to that, lol.

Yeah, i tried the icon, the menu, and the command... All three make the icon depress, but nothing shows up. Hopefully its the monitor thing....Well, let us know what happens. Hopefully it's the dual monitor thing...

:beer:

[twiceroadsfool]

It sure was... I came in today (sunday) and grabbed a monitor from someone elses desk, and there were alllllllll the toolbars i couldnt find, LOL. First i tried the resolution thing, but it was already clsoe to maxed out. He had them on the outer edges of the second monitor, so i wouldnt have found them, lol.

The ME, the Control Panel one for Material Mapping, yadda yadda. Phew! I was gettin worried for a minute there. : )

[Steve_Bennett]

It sure was... I came in today (sunday) and grabbed a monitor from someone elses desk, and there were alllllllll the toolbars i couldnt find, LOL. First i tried the resolution thing, but it was already clsoe to maxed out. He had them on the outer edges of the second monitor, so i wouldnt have found them, lol.

The ME, the Control Panel one for Material Mapping, yadda yadda. Phew! I was gettin worried for a minute there. : )Thanks for letting us know what the outcome was!

[twiceroadsfool]

LOL... It gets better... I hooked up that monitor, and dragged the ME and stuff back on to the first monitor... Then 3dsMax flopped while i was working on soemthing, and i had to End Task it. Suddenly the toolbars had reverted back to the other screen, lol.

Short story shorter, the IT guy got me a second monitor for that desk, LOL.

[Chirag Mistry]

Well, there is a way around all this just in case if you can't find another monitor. Find the 3Dviz.ini file (or max) in program files/viz or max folder. Open this in notepad and somewhere midway you will find this,

[MtlEditorPosition]
MainWindow=1674 191 1368 1821
OptionsWindow=23 267 333 517

I am not quite sure about which ones are the X, Y position. But remember if it is > 1000, then its probably on the next screen, so reduce that number to something less, save it and restart MAX or VIZ. This is true for all other dialog positions. I would advice to make a copy of .ini file before changing anything.

This was one of the first things that my professor had shown me. We had dual monitors in school and when I worked remotely from home with single monitor, had to change these settings everytime.

[Steve_Bennett]

I would advice to make a copy of .ini file before changing anything.
GREAT tip!!! I also love your suggestion to backup the ini file first - tha's somthing I always do when working with system files!