When i was doing my first render i got errors saying missing materials, and it said if i rendered they would be black or something, and secondly why are my windows....strange...the same material as the car, and dont laugh at the material, i think i mucked up the tutorial and i might have put the sky light in the wrong place...

You're missing materials, you will need to point 3ds to a directory with all the interior/detail textures, and you will want to assign a skin to the body. If you're doing it all by yourself, not using a "pre-set" scene, you need to make and set all materials by yourself, 3d studio can't figure out which parts are windows by itself.

What you've done is made a material and applied it to the car. What you need to do is make a submaterial for each part of the car. The easiest way to do this is to (as the tutorial for LFS rendering states) go into the Material/Map Browser -> Scene, then drag CXM_<carname> etc to one of the material blobs in the material editor.

3DS Max DOES know which bits are the window as the material assignments used in the CMX format are retained during the import process.

Follow the tutorial (missing out the Brazil bits if you don't have it) and it will tell you what to do.

Quote from N1TR0S :

and i might have put the sky light in the wrong place...

cant do that lol, it doesnt matter where it is or in what position, just as long as its there it gives the same effect

Quote from tristancliffe :

3DS Max DOES know which bits are the window as the material assignments used in the CMX format are retained during the import process.

I meant you can't expect 3ds to decide "hey, that's a window right there, i'll just go ahead and window'ize it for you".

OK, what is Brazil, i though it was a country and iv seen mentions of it else where and can someone point me to a good tutorial please

there..
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ ... -1859152?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Quote from N1TR0S :

OK, what is Brazil, i though it was a country and iv seen mentions of it else where and can someone point me to a good tutorial please

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=93506#post93506

Quote from N1TR0S :

OK, what is Brazil, i though it was a country and iv seen mentions of it else where and can someone point me to a good tutorial please

Form 3DS Noob to 3DS Noob: Brazil rio is a rendering engine capable of producing really good-looking images. Go to www.splutterfish.com and download there a limited edition of it. It can do only 512*384 resolution pix, but it doesnt matter ATM. Than you will be able to use tutorial on lfswiki.net. Thats where I have learnt my poor 3DS rendering skills.....

In the "camera 1" view can i rais and lower the height of my view?, i know i can pan etc...
Also if i want to select the window only, see the top post for why... how can i do this, if i click on it it just selects all of the body of the car, then i am in the design view then the windows are different colours but in the render view the whole car is one colour...

You need to use the mesh select tool, which is the tab next to the primatives tab on the right hand side. First select the whole car (body), then use the edit mode on face select and choose the polygons you want.

But you don't need to do this to make the windscreen different colours etc - the different sections will already be different materials. You just need to use a multi/sub object material.
To do this go into the Material/Map Browser and click scene. Choose the car (CMX_blah blah usually) and drag it's little blob onto the Material Editor, and choose Instance as the copy method. Then in the Material Editor you will have a material that has several submaterials, each one a different thing (e.g. wheel grip, tyres, windows, body [skin], lights etc).

It's all in the tutorial, as is how to fix the tyre mapping which uses the poly select tool I mentioned first.

how do i add a skin to the outside of the car?

Well, when you've done the above steps you'll see lots of materials to choose from. Each material requires some settings (e.g. wheels made to look a bit like metal, steering wheel grip to look like a steering wheel grip using the steering wheel dds, car skin made to look like paint with the skin file added as the diffuse texture).

Work your way through the tutorial, it's not that hard, and all will become clear. Just adding a skin to the bare car will look silly as the windows, lights, details etc won't be textured - you have to do all of them.

OK, i will have to confess... what tutorial have you been going on about for the last unpteen posts?

The one posted on the LFSwiki. Also can be found on Master Skinnerz, dSRC (I think) and numerous other LFS related sites.

I just assumed that you'd have done a bit of research on the topic and found (or hints to) these tutorials.

Edit: Made a helpul links section in my sig (sorry for the extra line to all those long-sig haters ) so now no-one has any excuse ever in the history of the world and everything ever now later soon. O RLY!

HE HEM
"First of all this is not a tutorial for beginners. It is meant for people who have worked with 3ds Max before. " !!!!!!!!!!!
I fall into that catagory!!1

Quote from N1TR0S :

HE HEM
"First of all this is not a tutorial for beginners. It is meant for people who have worked with 3ds Max before. " !!!!!!!!!!!
I fall into that catagory!!1

thats why i suggest to everyone that is a beginner not to look at that stuff, because it wont help you (as it didnt help me whatsoever)

just.. have to learn the program pretty much, look for tutorials that you want.. is it UVW Mapping, :google: is it.... materials? :google:

etc. and just learn the program that way, because looking at those tutorials wont help you to much until someone does something about it

I started with that tutorial and it taught me everything I needed to know to begin. It takes you through the process of getting a car from import to render, almost step by step. If I can do it, anyone (except Nuse obviously ) can.

Nuse - mentioning UVWmapping won't help - there is no reason for a beginner to 3DS to even know what it is, let alone how to do anything with it, don't confuse them

ah yes.. sorry... umm.. UVW mapping is um.. what i had for breakfast dont worry about that

so you know what that means... my cereal didnt say OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo to me this morning (get it.... cherios.. all O shape.. har har har..)