Material Previews are not Generated
Quote from Rob Holmes (RobH2 @ Autodesk Forums) on 2025-December-19, 00:45Feels strange to hear echoes in a forum that has no active posts... Well, here's to populating the Forum.
I'm a new user. I've installed the necessary components and everything seems to be working well except that I cannot generate a preview of a material that I place in the 'Materials' tab.
I've viewed the help video and followed it explicitly.
- I created a 'New Folder' and immediately renamed it
- I check the corner of the new Material that I grabbed from the object, choose 'RWS', verify the other options and hit 'Render Preview.' The screen flashes, I see a wire frame sphere that disappears in less than a second and I'm looking and an empty and blank scene. No task is running.
- So, I've placed the material on a LAB scene test sphere and rendered it. I saved it and imported it, that worked fine.
But, I'd like to just be able to automate it like I'm supposed to be able to do. What am I setting wrong or missing?
I'm using Max 2026, the latest version of XSMP and V-Ray 7, update 2 hotfix 3. Maybe the issue is the 'hotfix 3' that was released recently?
Feels strange to hear echoes in a forum that has no active posts... Well, here's to populating the Forum.
I'm a new user. I've installed the necessary components and everything seems to be working well except that I cannot generate a preview of a material that I place in the 'Materials' tab.
I've viewed the help video and followed it explicitly.
- I created a 'New Folder' and immediately renamed it
- I check the corner of the new Material that I grabbed from the object, choose 'RWS', verify the other options and hit 'Render Preview.' The screen flashes, I see a wire frame sphere that disappears in less than a second and I'm looking and an empty and blank scene. No task is running.
- So, I've placed the material on a LAB scene test sphere and rendered it. I saved it and imported it, that worked fine.
But, I'd like to just be able to automate it like I'm supposed to be able to do. What am I setting wrong or missing?
I'm using Max 2026, the latest version of XSMP and V-Ray 7, update 2 hotfix 3. Maybe the issue is the 'hotfix 3' that was released recently?
Quote from Siger on 2025-December-21, 22:26Hello, Rob,
thank you for finding and reporting the issue.
A new minor version with this bug fixed is already available.
Please download only the main plugin installation file. Other components do not need to be re-installed.
Hello, Rob,
thank you for finding and reporting the issue.
A new minor version with this bug fixed is already available.
Please download only the main plugin installation file. Other components do not need to be re-installed.
Quote from Rob Holmes (RobH2 @ Autodesk Forums) on 2026-August-04, 14:38I'm going to answer my own question in hopes it helps someone else. When installing the Max/VRay presets library code, don't use a custom path to start with. Let it go to c:\Program Data. Confirm that the app works in Max. Then, if you like to keep TBs of OS non-related data off of your C Drive like I do, put the 'XsmpMaxPre00Lib' folder where you want it and make a Junction to it. That works. It took me over 10 hours to figure this out as there is practically no helpful info about this issue on the very, very sparcely populated Forum here.
I hope this helps....peace...RobH2
I'm going to answer my own question in hopes it helps someone else. When installing the Max/VRay presets library code, don't use a custom path to start with. Let it go to c:\Program Data. Confirm that the app works in Max. Then, if you like to keep TBs of OS non-related data off of your C Drive like I do, put the 'XsmpMaxPre00Lib' folder where you want it and make a Junction to it. That works. It took me over 10 hours to figure this out as there is practically no helpful info about this issue on the very, very sparcely populated Forum here.
I hope this helps....peace...RobH2