A very strange problem with imported objects and textures.

ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
edited March 2013 in Bryce Discussion

I prepared 3 figures, clothed, as is my wont done in Poser and exported as obj's. This is the exact same figure and clothes. only the poses are different.

The first time I tried tweaking and then rendering the first figure I was doing lots of tweaks and talking to someone at the same time so didn't save the changes as I went. Eventually Bryce crashed the file.

So I started again, got it imported set up and rendered and saved that one. Went on and prepared the other 2 figures and fully rendered them as well. So far no problems.

Now the only thing I od wrong before trying to merge one of the figures into a prepared backgorund was to accidently try to merge the corrupted file and not the correct one.

Closed Bryce and reopened. deleted the corrupted file so I wouldn't try to load that one again.

However what has now happened, for some strange reason is that not just one, but all of my working files for the 3 separate objs have lost one texture. Not really lost it as such, it still shows in the texture editor as being there and applied to the clothing item, but it wont render. Not just on the one that was the 2nd attempt for the one that crashed, but all 3 figures, which are all saved with different names, not as sequential saves. It is the same item of clothing on all 3 figures.

I removed the texture from all 3 files and resaved them with another different, but related, name, and even closed Bryce and rebooted my PC to try make sure there was nothing left in memory. Still no joy.

I opened a new scene added a primitive and applied the texture to that and saved it in my texture libarary.

Opened one of my saved scenes, and again this tex will not apply to the skirt, but will still apply to a primitive placed in the scene.

So any idea why this has happened ? One file I could maybe understand, and just would delete and start again from scratch, but 3 scenes, each of which have had this happen to the same item of clothing seems very strange.

BTW in the first scene the skirt came in as figure 5 in the group mesh list, whereas on the 2nd and 3rd files it comes in as figure 4 so making it even stranger.

BTW I even opened the texture in PS adn renamed it and saved it in a different format, in case it was the texture file that had somehow corrupted.

Post edited by Chohole on

Comments

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Tricky... hard to follow too... I'd have to test the Bryce file, if you can strip it back to the minimum that still exhibits faulty behavior I could pick over it for you. Over time Horo and I have experienced lots of quirky problems with Bryce. It is possible to embed corrupt information into a scene file that is almost impossible to detect but the file can, with careful export/importing, be sterilised. My approach would be to take your scene and export all the content from it, skies included, make a note of camera position or use a place holder object. And then bring it all into an empty scene.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638
    edited December 1969

    Oh dear - we had such and the only reason I didn't get mad was that I already was. Deleted everything, one by one, saving, closing Bryce, restarting, loading, deleting next part, and so on, until I even had the sky black. Impossible to find what was wrong - in the end it was the default.br7 I had made at one time during the bug tracking period with one of the betas. I deleted it and redid it. That fault didn't pop up since then.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    AS I said this is happening with 3 scene files. Each one it is a completely different obj being imported, although the content of each obj is the same. And it is only the one part of each obj, and always the same part, even though it actually has different mes names in one of the scenes.

    The only other common denominator is the sky, which is one of my own skies which I made in Bryce 5. However this sky has worked fine for me in other scenes.

    The most annoying part is that it is a "joke" render, not a serious one, but still it is getting to be a challenge to complete it.

    The next thing I am going to do is to try completely recreating one of the scenes from scratch, reimporting the obj.

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    The problem, as you are no doubt aware, is that Bryce does not have garbage collection, or if it does, it is often not effective. If you have introduced something corrupt into one scene file - or three - and then removed it, the chances are that it is still in the source file but that it is just no longer pointed at any longer. However, under certain circumstances it is possible to resurrect these "zombie" components by accident. Skies, because they have evolved over time, can also cause trouble - but the trouble I've had with skies, doesn't sound like the problem you are having. So I am not highly suspicious of the sky.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    recreating the scene with a fresh instance of the obj has imported correctly, with all textures in place, just needing tweaking. (of course there quite a few tweaks I did :roll:

    I shall do that, and I will also save it to a different drive, and then do the other 2.

    Typical. I decide to do a silly image for fun, and it ends up being the biggest hassle I have had so far with Bryce 7.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638
    edited December 1969

    Nevertheless, I recommend making a copy of the sky settings and recreate it anew after loading Bryce. By the way, opening a new document doesn't clear the memory. I've just checked that with a scene that took up 2.8 GB saving. Then I opened a new document and this did not release the memory, Bryce took yet another bit. Loading my scene I just had saved naturally made the Out of memory error pop up.

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    Nevertheless, I recommend making a copy of the sky settings and recreate it anew after loading Bryce. By the way, opening a new document doesn't clear the memory. I've just checked that with a scene that took up 2.8 GB saving. Then I opened a new document and this did not release the memory, Bryce took yet another bit. Loading my scene I just had saved naturally made the Out of memory error pop up.

    Except when making video's - and then only for demonstrating a point quickly - do I use New Document. Otherwise, I always open up a fresh instance of Bryce. It's nice to know this is the right thing to do!

  • ManOfSteelManOfSteel Posts: 14
    edited December 1969

    I find that this (a texture will not appear on a certain part of an object, but will elsewhere) happens from time to time and lots of times it's because the object has not been smoothed. So I click the E button next to the object, lower the amount to a very low setting, maybe 15, and then click the smooth sphere. Oftentimes that solves the problem.
    On a related note, sometimes an object will have a weird, black smudge or shadow on it, even where no texture or material is applied. Smoothing the object will eliminate the smudge.
    I only smooth objects that import with obvious faceting, and when I do, I usually turn the amount down to about 10 or 15. Isn't the default setting 40 or something? That will often distort the mesh or make it too smooth.

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