Thanks for your help Justin but the problem fixed itself when I remade some of the mesh. Ill definitely spend some time looking into instances, thanks for the link. Just to explain the mesh is a plane that has three layers to it. To try and make the carpet have some depth ive done this three layer mesh with an alpha. Then the mesh and texture tile. All of this is done when the mesh is straight and then i use the soft select in max to make it look like it has been pushed about.