Hey all,
I’m at the very end of a big project I’m super proud of and darnet I’m hitting one snag that is killing me. I’m on my 10th and final run on re-texturing a very big scene and it keeps on crashing. I didn’t do anything radically different on the last round of editing (Modo) that would warrant a crash sans any messaging. It’s even throwing up an error that it can’t write out the dump file!
Tons of space, solid machine, I’ve been using RC in a workflow for a solid month, hitting it non-stop for the past week as a contract finished up and I try and get this project out the door.
I just finished deleting the UV map in modo and re-projecting in Atlas 2 (I’ve done this before multiple times) but it errors out on texturing. I don’t want RC’s unwrap to mess up the UVs I made…
On actual pixel size, I’m getting 50 texture 8k by 8k outputs. Again, RC doesn’t seem to have an issue with this other than having to chew on it for 12 hours and making some insane UVs I can’t work around.
Any ideas? I can usually find an answer on-line but the crash-and-don’t-tell-much isn’t helping. I do have one dump file, and I think it sent one up.
Steam client.
Bonus question: How do I use ortho-projection? I don’t get it. I render an image, have the ortho projection in the 1D view, and then… what? I have a tiff? Can I alter that tiff/jpg/whatever for a better projection say for a sky dome? How do I get it back in there? CR’s help on this is scant, and the video explaining Ortho is really old, so much so that it seems to be showing things that no longer exist in the last build.
Need to get this out the door ASAP, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Can’t wait to show ya’ll the final result in Valve’s Destinations - soooo close!
Sorry to be bumping this so early, but I’m under some deadlines. What are my next steps if RC errors out on a texture with only a local dump file produced and no other explanation to what is going on? I’m at the end of my workflow and have zero idea what to do next.
Right, possible angle here now that I’m focusing on some other parts of my workflow so thought I’d update the thread. The question is can CR or myself look at the dump file to see if this is the issue or not:
I’m in a Destinations workflow, meaning the last program is Valve’s Hammer editor where Destinations gets its mojo from.
Normally I test by directly importing RC to Hammer to load it into VR, explore a component, make changes in Modo, erase all UVs, recreate them, and pop it back into RC for another texture render. What I think may have been happening is that I’ve idiotically hitting ‘unwrap’ all this time before I re-texture (making the UV remapping in Modo moot, though I have to delete and remap my UVs for RC to take them anyways). I think this maskied the issue until now when I’m trying to complete the final steps of the project.
Trying to import into Hammer I’m now getting a diffractioncolor location error. It seems the texture file isn’t properly referenced when I output it from Modo. After a test or two, unwrapping and then running the texture doesn’t crash RC.
TLDR; Maybe RC is crashing sans any reporting because there is an alias or location error in the texture files? I’ll start talking to some Modo experts to figure out what it is on that end, but how can I find out if this is the case in the dump file?
Thanks! Sorry for the rapid bumping on this, I’m hyper-focusing on finding a solution as it’s holding a lot of stuff up (even though my emergency is not yours of course).
Okay,
I’m doing some testing to confirm, but I think I found out what the error is. It originates in Modo, but RC doesn’t interpret an issue so crashes as a result when it hits the bug.
I have been saving my RC meshes in a directory structure with a space in it. I use a different structure for my Modo stuff (though file spaces are supposed to be fine, there are none in that structure).
Modo seems to break the texture file name references when it sees a space (or other special character?), though Modo doesn’t know it broke it, so the models act as normal in there. When I export it to something else however, it can’t find the full references to the texture (I think it stops naming the file at the space). Hammer (Destination’s editing tool) is what started to bring light to the issue.
I think RC just crashes when it starts trying to reference files in the generated UVs that aren’t properly pointing to the texture.
I’ve got a lot of work to redo due to this error, but I’ll put some time in and test the theory with some RC renders later this week and get back to this thread with the results. The only thing RC seems to be doing wrong is not gracefully handling the error and crashing out. I’m putting in a ticket with the Foundry and will see what their response is.
Anything on this? I’m dead in the water - RC’s UV’s are impossible to tweak in photoshop and only a certain amount of my modo models are allowing retexture in RC while the rest crash 10-30 minutes into the texture…
Sometimes the dump files writes, the other times it doesn’t. Either way it crashes without any explanation if I could get some hint as to the crash I can finish this project and correct my workflow for the next project…
Hi Castlenock
If you use say Zbrush for the modeling and UVs, then it‘s without any problem. Can you send the model that causes the issues for inspection ?
Wishgranter wrote:
Hi Castlenock
If you use say Zbrush for the modeling and UVs, then it‘s without any problem. Can you send the model that causes the issues for inspection ?
Thanks for the response Wishgranter! Sorry I’ve been bumping this so much, under some pressure…
Unfortunately Zbrush isn’t in my workflow (nor can I splurge on that at the moment). I’ll definitely consider it when I am able. A majority of my work is for Valve’s Destinations and I picked Modo as it flows best when going into Hammer/Destinations. That and the tutorials and help from Valve are Modo specific so I start to lose advice/help when I go off that path. Lastly, Modo holds a lot more potential to speed post work up on a grander scale if I do this work as a revenue model for my company (my hopeful plan).
I can dropbox link the model later today and PM you it. It’s a mess though; the project was intended to be a learning experience, but the results (starting with RC, so I blame you guys!) were so great I have been working towards a polished product. But this model had been a month of experimenting before I buttoned down the workflow to get to work so I’m sure paths are all over the ■■■■ place as a result.
I noticed in another thread that I can peruse the rproj file, so I’ll do that - and I couldn’t open the dump file before but just realized it was a separate error on my machine so I’ll try that today (any hints on reading that dump?).
I’ll have a project preview on Destinations by the end of the week - without having Modo generate UVs or importing to Hammer from Modo there are a lot of things lacking in the preview.
Again, I’m almost positive this is a Modo issue, I’m just trying to figure out why RC is ceasing up. Once I do that, I can fix the Modo bit and I think I’ll have a solid workflow that I can hopefully add Zbrush to when a paid project rolls in.
Would love your opinions and thoughts on the preview - I’ll make sure to reference RC as one of the main tools if I get to the ‘how this was produced’ portion of the project.
Thanks again, I’ll PM you the model later today but I think you’ll find it’s a hot mess.
Wishgranter,
Did the OBJ file help at all? Is there something else I can send you? Thanks again for the help…
Wishgranter,
Looks like I have to restart my renders for other purposes so don’t worry about that obj. file. Thanks regardless. If someone could field my question on Ortho projection (and the new unwrap algorithm) in another thread that would be great as I want to make sure this batch of renders are my final ones for my present project.
Thanks.