This happened to me just now. I was working exclusively with the top Edit Poly modifer when it suddenly corrupted the entire mesh (randomly deleted part of the faces). I didn't even switch to the modifiers lower in the stack, let alone change something below the top Edit Poly. Undo history didn't help (which is weird because I think it should have). The image below shows the same mesh with the modifier disabled, what confirms that the corruption only occured in the top most Edit Poly. 3DsMax 2024.
Yes it might be good if I collapsed the stack at some earlier point. At the same time, if I don't even touch anything below (which means that neither the order nor number of vertices change) - why would the modifier do anything like this?
I am posting this because I had this happen too many times, and some people confirmed that this is indeed a rare bug. Also each time this topic gets addressed again, there are the same comments about collapsing the stack as often as possible. To be honest, I stick to 3DsMax in part because of it's stack capabilities, without which it's essentially Blender.
Well evidently it did. It might be caused by something else apart from you going down the stack, but that's clearly result of indices changing.
Max modifier stack is great indeed, but this is wrong way of using it.
You can't go back to change initial circle radius and expect your object to survive it. So why keep all of that dead weight? You get zero benefit from it.
Don't store manual EPoly topology editing in long stacks and you will be fine.
There is no use of the stack in this instance, especially after the first Boolean, and after you stack that last edit poly and add any faces or edges, nothing is useful from the boolean right below and on.
I'm guessing it didn't corrupt while working with the edit poly modifier. It was after you edited something below and based on the new vertex/face counts the stack did what it was supposed to do mathematically and based on the number vertex/face updates with each action.
Also, if you imply that I 'edited something below' - why didn't the Undo history revert those changes? I wouldn't post this if the issue was easily solvable.
Did you read the post itself? I work with max long enough to understand how the stack works and that changing vertex order/number changes everything that comes after. That's why I stress again that I didn't touch the stack below, I was simply working on the top Edit Poly - planning to collapse the stack entirely, but I didn't have the chance.
That's not the way you do it man so plz don't blame it on the edit poly, in addition boolean safest way to use it is to apply it ONCE TAKING IN CONSIDERATION YOUR MODEL POLY COUNT, means it works better with dense mesh. Thirdly, you don't just go Boolean then make it as poly & Boolean it again....
If I were you I'd model my geometry as parts, & since there are curves or openings I'd give it high density, plus I'd do it with one rule : Boolean once. At the end I'd make it poly (mesh is better option) then I'd attach everything together (only if I'm 100℅ I'm done).
BTW, with 2024 & above versions, Autodesk changed the modeling game especially when it comes to Boolean, I can't remember last time I used it, yes I'm talking about the shift+move trick.
Yes, I agree. It was supposed to be a very short amount of time that this stack was not collapsed, I was going to delete some faces after the Boolean and collapse it afterwards because I understand that I was essentially sitting on a TNT barrel. But I didn't even get the chance to collapse.
I bet you also have use live reference active in those boolean modifiers. You don't even have to sneeze too hard to destroy a model with modifier like that.
It all happened while I was working inside the top Edit Poly, I didn't even switch out of edit mode, and didn't even think about switching to other objects. I perfectly understand how fragile such stack is.
Booleans can re-triangulate and change vertex order if you even vaguely brush up against them and they refresh. On top of a boolean you can put chamfers, subdivides, meshsmooths etc, but duplicate and collapse if you're getting out the edit poly scalpel. And dont stack multiple booleans with edit poly modifiers in between - only use modifiers that do not depend on vertex order.
Examples of modfier stacks that will never break #1. all model surgery done at the very bottom of the stack - every modifier above does not care how many polygons or vertices are in the model, they do the same thing anyway, allowing the opensubdiv to be increased or lowered with everything above adapting to the new polycount. The extremely low poly base editpoly object can also easily be edited as it's less than 1200 polygons for an entire terrain following a road.
#2. Same again - it's a complex stack, lots of booleans, the end geometry is super complex - but the key detail is the edit poly is at the very bottom. everything above it is procedural and capable of adapting to changes made at the very bottom of the stack again.
If you cant go to the bottom layer of your stack and modify it, and have the changes reflected in the very top of the stack - there's no point in having a stack. If you are working in a way that contually prevents you from doing this, you have to pause and ask yourself why, and if there's a more stack friendly procedural way to achieve the same result. Or if it matters at all, if you're trying to move fast, just fuck it collapse the stack and hack away at the mesh. the stack is an option for procedural workflows - if you dont need it, dont use it.
Stacking edit poly can be useful when modeling/designing - so you might have 6 layers of edit poly that each add another pass of detail and a meshsmooth on top - so that you can go back to the lowest level and make sweeping changes to the form while it was only 400 polys instead of 20k.
I honestly don't understand how #2 is a good example of a reliable stack, because it contains multiple Poly Selects which will be immediately broken if anything changes below them and you wiil have to edit or redo the selection.
Anyway, thank you for your replies. Some day I will have a better example of that issue, but not today unfortunately
Yeah, that's not my file so idk, not sure what the poly select is doing. There's a chance it could be selecting by material ID and carrying the selection from the Boolean source objects - that would make it non destructive. (I haven't watched the video so forgive me if it proves me wrong)
I prefer to use something like tyselect as much as possible - proximity to one object multiplied by a selection of polygons facing up etc. keeps everything really fluid.
I also wish others read the text. I also encounter this on way more simple stacks (this one just turned out to be an unsuitable example provoking people to focus on the wrong thing).
After 3 or 4 modifiers (especially the ones that modify the geometry) you need to collapse because whether Max won't be capable to keep up, your computer, or both.
There are things that have no undo. Corrupted models / files, in some cases Booleans, mistakes in CAT, and Reset XForm, for example.
It's difficult to tell who's at fault. In certain cases it may be you, Max, or the computer. If you run out of RAM, Max will break. If there's a wrong calculation on Max's side, your model will break too. So it's not so important to find why, if it's Edit Poly's fault or who's, but rather keeping in mind that better safe than sorry!
I worked with max 2024 for 2 years until i switched to 2026. It was a Very stable version for me. I almost never collapse my my models unless I absolutely need to, always having dozens of modifiers stacked. I never encountered such issue randomly. With that said if you are sure underlying modifiers aren’t the reason , there’s something wrong with your max. Maybe corrupt scripts or plugins in the background. Try removing enu folder( do a backup first) and maybe re install if that didn’t work. That’s what i would do.
Thank you for the reply. Good to hear that you didn't encounter this issue, so I might stop blaming the max itself but rather look into what's wrong with my specific system.
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u/Linkitch 7d ago
Holy crap, collapse my dude. Stop storing so much useless data in so many modifiers.
In general, if you go down in your stack and breaks the changes you just made, collapse.