Okay, been a while since I've been here! I got my new computer all set up a while ago, and just recently got around to installing Max again after being away for a month or two. Anyways, I install it and open up the file I last worked on, on my USB drive, and get this:

For comparison, here is what it looked like on my last computer (Just the blade): Curiously, everything else in the file was completely untouched. Does anyone know what caused this? I'm wondering if it's maybe a bug in transitioning a file from a 32 bit to 64 bit operating system? I ask this because I've had files behave similarly in the past if I had brought one from my old computer(XP 32bit), to my friend's (Vista/7 64bit). It worked fine upon returning to my computer though.
If anyone knows what caused this, do you know how to fix it? I could just remake the high poly from the un-buggered low, or reconnect my old computer and try and export it as another file, but these are both time consuming and if there's a quick solution that would be great :P Anyways, thanks guys!

Hmm. Is it the exact same version of max? Not sure without knowing all the variables but sounds like you at least found a work-around. I have lost work before to corrupt files and its the worst.

Yeah, same version aside from the 32 and 64 bit. I decided just to re-make it from the low as it's just one piece. I'm almost done, and it shouldn't require much tweaking in the end, but I realized that every other thing I've made is probably corrupt too. I'll probably just have to go back onto my old computer eventually and export everything as .obj's or something and see if that fixes the issue. Time consuming, but probably necessary if I want any of the other stuff I've done

Yeah sounds like the way to go. I always keep a back-up of my scenes in .OBJ (I use maya more than max these days)

The native files for max and maya are potentially bug ridden especially version to version. Obj is good clean point data and not much else.

This happens to me ALL THE TIME when I bring models from work (max 8.0 x32) to home (max 9 x64), but sometime max just makes things explode for no apparent reason. Almost every time I have had that issue tho, the geom that explodes either has a massive modifier stack, or a turbosmooth on top.

The best method I know of to avoid this is to remove any turbosmooth / meshsmooth modifiers from your mesh, then collapse it by adding it to a new piece of geom before bringing it into the later version of max. Its not really a quick workaround, but it has pretty much solved the problem for me.

-N

for exporting max files to other version collapsing the modifier stack helps a bit
but its no guarantee

Yeah, a friend of mine was talking about this yesterday with his copy of 64-bit. He made something either on 64 or 32 and brought it to the other one, and all the verts got flipped around somehow. Seems like something they'd fix pretty quickly, but hey, who knows.

Collapsing the stack would help, resetting xforms and collapsing, collapsing to a mesh instead of a poly sometimes helps, and if all else fails, exporting/importing the file can help.

^^ hey Jason ^^

I think I narrowed it down to having a turbosmooth on the stack, but as I use symmetry and reference objects frequently, collapsing the stack is too destructive of a solution. So instead I uninstalled 64b max and installed the 32b version instead. That's the solution for my sitiaution, as I wasn't too attached to the 64b.

As has been said, this is always a problem with modifiers. You could probably take it back to the old version and it would work fine (just don't save it!). Then you could remove or collapse the modifiers and bring it into the new one. I've had this problem because of going between max 8 and 2010 sometimes. The solution always works.

Good luck!

I've never seen this happen from 32 to 64 or visa versa. That's an interesting error...

Yep, its happened to me too but not between 32/64 bit versions of max on the same machine, but happens when going from a 64bit machine (home) back to a 32bit machine (work). To get around it I would open the file in 32bit on the 64 bit machine, save it out as 32 and it would work on the 32bit only machine.

If that does work, reset xform, collapse the stack, and export as obj.