Texture not auto-updating in Max viewport. Is there a way to turn it on?

[VinsanityV20]

Program: 3ds max 2009 32-bit.

'Sup dawgs!
I've been using Max for a few years now and there are still a few things that bug me. Like, for instance the fact that selected polys in your UV Unwrap editor don't always show up as glowing red polys in the viewport (despite hitting your F3/F4 buttons to supposedly toggle it). Or for instance, what I'm going through now.

I'm working on a little model. Nothing fancy, just a regular looking dude. Trying to get a realistic character done for my portfolio, something current game console era ready...like an enemy the main character would beat up:

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q...forforums2.jpg

Now, I'm up to the texturing part and frankly, my workflow has slowed to a CRAWL because of the issue i'm having. The texture won't auto-update in the viewport! Even though, initially, it did this by default. Now my workflow involves making a tweak to the texture in Photoshop, saving out the PSD, going into Max, into the Material Editor, reloading the texture, waiting the minute it takes before the "You mean this texture? OK or Cancel" prompt shows up, hitting ok, and then having to do something in the viewport to get the new stuff to show. If it sounds like it's a pain in the ass, that's 'cuz it is.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q...mforforums.jpg
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q...0/problem3.jpg

Is there any way to toggle something so that the texture autoupdates in the damn viewport!?! Or is Max just ever-finicky? I have taken forever to get this far, and frankly it shouldn't take that long. AND I still have a ways to go to finish this texture!!!

[TekNeek]

I've had this problem when the texture file's gotten too large,

try and save your texture as a targa or .png, then it dshould load up spontaneously.

[VinsanityV20]

I had a feeling it had something to do with it being too large, since it was autoupdating when I started making it. Thanks for the tip TekNeek! Now, time to see if that works...

Update: Ugh. Doesn't work. It appears that going into View>Show Materials in Viewport As>Standard Display with Maps will autoupdate things, but it's at such a low resolution its useless. Going into Hardware Display with Maps will get it to a much better, more appropriate resolution, but it won't autoupdate at all. Both PNGs and Targas don't help at all.

Here it is in the viewport:
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q...aredisplay.jpg

But here is the actual texture (I flip the blue color overlay on and off to see certain things):
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q.../actualtex.jpg

And, bizarrely, here it is in standard display:
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q...Stddisplay.jpg
Auto-updating like a champ, but completely un-usable.

I hope that you can see in the Mat. Editor that it's loading "Diffuse Copy.png". I tried both PNGs and Targas, but got nada. However, it's still faster than using the PSD by default, because it doesn't prompt me with a "PSD Input Options" prompt that takes forever to appear, so I will continue using PNGs. It still doesn't auto-update in the viewport though.

Oh, and btw, since when did 3DTotal stop loading up [IMG]'s from Photobucket? That sucks too!

[BiG ToE-3DT]

I like to use jpegs myself.

but I find after I save out my texture file, I have to pop into max and move the screen around some, or just select an object, before the texture updates.


as for photobucket, it's the section of the forum your in, image links are turned off up in here, up in here.

[TekNeek]

A quick workaround I've found useful is using DirectX shaders.