Carrara 8 Pro behaving weird after a while or when adding certain props/objects

Rhian-SkybladeRhian-Skyblade Posts: 223
edited April 2013 in Carrara Discussion

Has anyone of you ever experienced Carrara 8 Pro (Win 7 64 Bit) doing weird things or doing things wrong after some hours working with it?

Here's a list I noticed now over time and could only be "fixed" by closing Carrara and starting over - or deleting a certain item from the scene.

This is not so much of a help request , more of a exchange of experience and thoughts on this.
With most of those issues I can live, since they go away as soon as I restart carrara.


When using "Starry Sky": (Using that sometimes when I am too lazy postwork stars in PS)

Even the weakest reflection starts showing weird dots as if you have a defective TFT monitor (A slight reflection used on silk or velvet)

Glass with absorbtion or also glass shaders in general no longer render transparent like glass - they look as if someone abused the "Glow" part in a Shader. In short, it becomes flat brilliant white...

I had this with a rock I duplicated a few times in order to construct a organic looking rock-wall with plants. One of those duplicated rocks turned flat brilliant white in the render. After I deleted it and replaced it by another duplicate the problem was gone.

Also after I removed starry sky - all those problems were gone. ... weird.

Duplication - when Carrara runs a while or the scene becomes "crowded":

Background Info at what point I start to experience some weird things in Carrara:
Sometimes I am lucky and I can spend almost a whole saturday or a whole afternoon during the week with Carrara...

Most of my scenes tend to be large object-wise - my recent project for example is to create a Grove. So there are many objects in there, such as large organic rocks (exported and carrarified from Rustic Rocks) to create a rim/wall around the grove that looks organic and not smooth. Then I use plenty of trees - a mix between Carrara trees and DinoRaul's trees and other objects like tables and all the other small things you would need for a outdoor party by camp-firelight ^^ and hair used as grass. And I use to work with procedual shaders instead of normal textures a lot - that keeps the over-all texture size nice small.

Now the list - given Carrara runs now a while and/or the scene has become large object-wise

Duplicating something - the duplicated item is either suddenly extremely tiny and has to be resized
Duplicating something - the duplicated item is totally off and I have to rotate it back to normal
Duplicating something - the duplicated item does not appear and cannot be resized

Some items suddenly lose their texture (mostly have that with non-carrara trees). I usually notice that with some annoyance when the render is done.

Light Bulbs do not really give off light anymore... they are as if they have become dead or non-existent and you just have the bulb object. And I usually try to avoid using too many lights.

Light Bulb: Glow Effect does not work on some bulbs anymore

I have a Intel Hexa Core CPU... and sometims, one of those six render blocks simply does not render and leaves its ugly color...
I noticed that, because at some point the render was at 100 % and when I went back to the assembly room I wasn't asked I really want to abort the render process. So I assume Carrara was really done rendering.

Sky: Sometimes the sky does not render. It's either transparent or pitch black. First I thought it was the alpha channel I checked...
But I had the alpha channel in the render room checked often enough and always had my sky...

Very often happens:
I move over to the vertex room and suddenly I receive a message : an error occurred - unable to render preview
And then I usually know the scene is broken. I also have that most of the time after two or three hours of working... no matter if I have a complex scene or only one figure loaded.

End Conclusion:
Most of those problems are solved when I start Carrara again. Sometimes they break a scene :-/ (I tend now to create always six versions of my projects, just to be on the save side and I never compress my scenes)

Any thoughts? Does any of that still happen in Carrara 8.5?
Have you experienced similar things?

Post edited by Rhian-Skyblade on

Comments

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,989
    edited December 1969

    sure, my scenes usually run out at over a gig
    I save incrementally and when I get a few I start saving over the early ones and change the name
    I never compress- if I do then I am asking for trouble

    my main problem is with duplicating I get weird results rather than the duplicated object appearing where it should be

    I did have problems a while ago cause PS elements was playing sill buggers with my memory management - (I run a few programs at the same time) s0 I moved it's swap file to another drive and that helped

  • Rhian-SkybladeRhian-Skyblade Posts: 223
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    sure, my scenes usually run out at over a gig
    I save incrementally and when I get a few I start saving over the early ones and change the name
    I never compress- if I do then I am asking for trouble

    my main problem is with duplicating I get weird results rather than the duplicated object appearing where it should be

    I did have problems a while ago cause PS elements was playing sill buggers with my memory management - (I run a few programs at the same time) s0 I moved it's swap file to another drive and that helped

    I learned a while ago the hard way that compressing is not the best idea. Ever since, I I uncheck that one - always.
    The duplicating does the same... when I duplicate from a duplicate - item appears several "meters" away and I have to drag it back.

    Usually, I have IrfanView and Photoshop running in the background, since I very often create new textures or work over existing textures (mostly skin). Sometimes even Poser because I am clothifying another set of dragon wings.

    As long as I do not start my render process in carrara, all is ok. But f I start the render process, I better leave my PC alone. Carrara seems to be very territorial with the RAM and CPU during that time and won't even allow music or surfing without heavy lagg. But that is OK now :D got a kindle fire to entertain myself during that time ^^

    As for Poser Objects...
    I can't import the Forest scene...
    Stonemason's Forests work nicely. They need some time to load, but they load. The Forest kills Carrara.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,989
    edited December 1969

    yes the forest kills carrara, it loads into poser 2012 no problem
    I can load the forest one bit by another no problems - takes a while just align everything as it comes in

    do you have Fenric's shader fixer?
    It's a one click fix for Poser shaders that come in with too much highlight - perfect for the Forest scene.

    The duplicating object thing. I guess you know that if you duplicate an object then move the duplicate, the next dup;licate will be offset from the first duplicate in the same way as the first duplicate was offset from the original?

    the way around it is to deselect the new duplicate and then reselect it

    OR to use copy and paste - but then you have another master object.

    Fenric has a duplicate tree command which is great for duplicating figures as well

  • Rhian-SkybladeRhian-Skyblade Posts: 223
    edited April 2013

    I have Fenric's Shader Doctor - is that what you mean?
    I still have to find out how that one works... so far I only managed to get "only" rid of the black reflection colors when using the Shader Optimizer in the Shader Rooms.
    The annoying highlight colors that turn everything into plastic look stay and I have to adjust them manually.

    And I love Fenric's tool that allows me to unlock figures or duplicating them :) saved me a lot stress and time and allowed me to create something new out of something old.

    Post edited by Rhian-Skyblade on
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,989
    edited December 1969

    Shader doctor yes, works for me, but it reduces highlight to 15 percent - I prefer none :)
    Are you selecting the figure or t he model before clicking Shader Doctor?

    selecting the figure then clicking on Fenric's shader doctor turns highlight into 15 percent and bump 15 percent for me

    yes I love the unlock command ;)

  • ManStanManStan Posts: 0
    edited April 2013

    Transparent objects glowing is a common issue when using absorption and in scattering. Just drop the transparency %. I have never filed a bug report on it because it can't seem to make it happen when I want to, it just does some times.

    If you duplicate an object, move the duplicate, then duplicate the duplicate, carrara will auto set the duplicate the the same distance/angle you move the 1st duplicate. This is actually great when you are doing a set of objects with regular spacing and placement, like wall beams. see image. This was easy to do, make one beam, duplicate, move, then ctrl+D, and carrara autoed each in at the same spacing.

    Also with carrara multicore aware it will use as many as you have available. If I remember right you can disable the multicore processing if you want to multi task ;)

    beams.jpg
    800 x 450 - 71K
    Post edited by ManStan on
  • Rhian-SkybladeRhian-Skyblade Posts: 223
    edited December 1969

    ManStan said:
    Transparent objects glowing is a common issue when using absorption and in scattering. Just drop the transparency %. I have never filed a bug report on it because it can't seem to make it happen when I want to, it just does some times.

    If you duplicate an object, move the duplicate, then duplicate the duplicate, carrara will auto set the duplicate the the same distance/angle you move the 1st duplicate. This is actually great when you are doing a set of objects with regular spacing and placement, like wall beams. see image. This was easy to do, make one beam, duplicate, move, then ctrl+D, and carrara autoed each in at the same spacing.

    Also with carrara multicore aware it will use as many as you have available. If I remember right you can disable the multicore processing if you want to multi task ;)

    Yes, the effect of duplicating objects for that purpose is really great.
    But sometimes, when I am just lazy because I want to prop an entire table with a full banquette (plates, forks, knifes, bowls and and and), it can be tedious :D

    As for the core thingy. I do not mind doing something else while my PC renders the image.
    It's just sometimes really annoying, when I have to check mails in between or my ears burn for a new album.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Rhiana said:

    I learned a while ago the hard way that compressing is not the best idea. Ever since, I I uncheck that one - always.
    The duplicating does the same... when I duplicate from a duplicate - item appears several "meters" away and I have to drag it back.


    This behavior is actually a feature and not a bug. If you duplicate object A and move the the duplicate four feet away, and duplicate the duplicate, the new duplicate will appear four feet away from the first duplicate, and so on, and so on, and so on.... To avoid this, try duplicating Object A, and moving the duplicate where you wish. Now, instead of duplicating the duplicate right away, deselect it, then re-select the duplicate and duplicate the duplicate. The new duplicate should be right on top of the first duplicate. Make sense? 'Cause I think I confused even myself! ;-)


    The reason I say it's a feature, is because it allows you to position and rotate an object and it will continue on with the translation. For instance, if you want a fence line with evenly spaced posts, or maybe you're assembling a spiral staircase, etc. etc.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Dang it! ManStan beat me to it!

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