Spent some recent time working on the shading issue of Max 2015 scenes opened and saved in Max 2018.
From what I've seen, it appears to be a Max bug.
Worked with the FBB rudder for testing. The rudder is an 8 vert, 12 edge object-- just a reshaped cube, so pretty simple.
1. Deleted the four outer edge polygons: shading gone
2. Bridged in the edges (i.e. new ones); shading returned
3. Deleted and replaced the side polygons to the new edges: shading gone
The shading issue looks the same as that when there is a bad structure such as double verts or a wrong number of edges (such as 5) that cannot be cleanly broken down into triangles. It is as if the info for the structures (and yet not all) are corrupted. Actually, this is not the first time I've seen a open/save issue across versions of Max. I have plane that started in Max 2012, opened and saved in Max 2015, and recently opened and saved in Max 2018. Was ok in Max 2015, but in Max 2018, several pivots were flipped: one wing is rotated 180 on x axis, and a gear door now pivots incorrectly.
When parts get corrupted (such as pivots sometimes getting messed up if the object is copied with links to a parent), it often comes down to just remaking the part.
Remaking the parts is both a drastic solution and far from practical, but it does seem to work. Having said that, we're all still looking for a more practical solution. And while I said looks like a Max bug, I'm certainly not ruling out the possibility there is something wrong (or could be wiser) with my build technique that a present version of Max "smooths over" and hides the issue, or that there is a new (or changed) FBX export setting that RF8 needs.
K.E.,
Are you guys having any open in older, saved in new Max version issues?
Enjoy a great week.
