Hi, I'm fairly new to 3ds max and I'm trying to texture a mesh properly so that I can export it to an .x file. However, I just can't get it to work right. Here's an image of the mesh I'm trying to texture: I want to texture the entire mesh as bricks. How exactly would I go about doing that so that the bricks face the correct direction on each side of the mesh and on the top sections of the mesh also? I tried a multi/sub-object material with 4 sub-materials, each one using the same bitmap for the texture. I set the front/back facing polygons to id# 1, the left/right facing polygons to id#2, the front/back top facing polygons to id# 3 and the left/right top facing polygons to id# 4. I then use 4 uvw map modifiers, one for each of the 4 map channels so that I can get the texture looking right. This is where I run into problems. I can get first modifier looking good with no problems. I apply the second modifier and begin to adjust the tiling and the polygons with that texture mapped will go blank (lose the texture). I have to pan the viewport to make the texture appear again. The same thing happens for the 3rd map channel and uvw modifier. When I apply the 4th modifier, all textures but the first go blank and I can't get them to reappear. Sorry if that's confusing but I'm confused as hell right now. Am I doing something wrong there? I'm doing this on a 3 year old laptop because it's more convenient than my desktop at the moment. Could system performance be an issue? It doesn't seem to have problems doing anything else. Thanks for your help!

for something this simple forget trying to do anything advanced. press m to get the material editor, put your brick tex in your diffuse slot, select all parts of your structure, apply texture, with all objects still selected go into the modifier panel and get uvw mapping modifier, apply box mapping, double click on uvw mapping modifier in the modifier stack to make it active, and use the scale tool to scale bricks appropriatly and equally for all sides.
that should work unless you're leaving out some detail that is needed.
goodluck!

Thanks for the help! I knew there had to be a simple way. It's almost looking right. There's still one minor issue though with the top facing polygons. The bricks on the top and bottom sides are facing the correct way but the left and right sides aren't. I wanted to make the top facing polygons brick but if I can't get them all to face the correct direction I might just stick a concrete slab on top of all the sides and then not having to worry about alignment.

You might also want to consider looking up some tutorials on UV layout. If you want better control over which way the bricks are facing you'd get the best results by applying a Unwrap UVW modifier and using "flatten mapping" from the mapping menu, then scaling and orientating each UV shell. However, if you haven't done this before it might be a little more tricky.

Thanks, I've glanced at some tutorials about that but haven't had the time to sit down and figure things out. I also didn't know if it applied to what I was doing.

what does your brick texture look like? just wondering.

It's just the standard one that comes with 3ds max. I figure I'd get it working with a generic brick texture before I use one that fits my scene better.