A tip from one beginner to another
starboard
Posts: 452
Greetings.
First let me say that Carrara is an incredibly program as I am sure by now that you are aware of. When combined with Photoshop, After Effects and Video Editing software, there is not much that you cannot do. However, because Carrara tries to do so much with so many assets, occasionally it will crash. Having been bitten multiply times by the Carrara deadly viper, known locally as the "End of the File Error", I have decided to post a warning to fellow neophytes. So some basic rules below. I am sure that more experienced users of Carrara can add far better ones, however this tip may go a long way to save your sanity.
1. Beware of the "Save" option... for it only saves to the present file you are using. If Carrara crashes, you may be greeted with the " End of File Error" when you try to open what you thought was a secure saved version, it will not open. In short your dead and all your work has gone to a digital macerator
Instead use the "Save As" option..almost always. It takes no longer than the saved command, and you actually save something. To help remember this consider the Aphid..possibly the most successful insect on the globe..ask any gardener. It is constantly leaving cloned versions of itself as it merrily moves along the plant leaf. Disgusting as it may seem, this is what we should be doing with Carrara, leaving cloned versions of what we are working on behind us. Any one of them can be opened with out fear of the "End of File Error". After a while dump the earlier clones in the trash, and keep the most recent. At least it will be you that is doing the dumping and not Carrara.
Anyway, it works for me..good luck
Starboardtack
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Comments
You are right, I do that all the time.
When my sequence is finished, I check that the last version is valid before removing the others (I keep all the same the previous last version, one never knows).
But another trick: to save your work each day on an external disc, that sometimes saved me because a too fast click can all destroy (when your wife calls you a second time for the dinner, e.g.).
I agree. I make sure the last save will load before deleting the next to last save.
DON'T do what I did last week: An 11 hour render, then close down Carrara (cos I needed the Mac for something else), ignore the save dialog cos the scene mods were just lighting for the render, and anyway you should never save on a shutdown, and THEN realise you didn't save the render!
Thanks guys,
Losing what you have spent hours working on can be one of the big screamers of Carrara.
One of others is finding content that you have bought and downloaded. I know nothing about code, but I get the impression from reading on the forum that the file system is an arcane series of Poser and DAZ add ons and patches. It reminds me of an old, old Andy Hardy flick from the 1930's I was watching, in which he was repairing an inner tube for his bicycle. The inner tube had so many repair patches that it was hard to see any of the original inner tube. His comment was "That there was plenty of life left in it yet."
I have learned not to use the auto system but to make my own independent folders on the hard drive. I makes life so much easier.
Starboardtack
if you are real lucky go to DAZ temp folder and restore earlier version and it might be in there, not sure with Mac
it could still be there with a ?in front of the filename hidden too
Another such trick is to create a fake file in the location with the name it would have had
ie doc1.bmp doc.1jpg doc1.png etc then right click on it and open properties restore previous version,
Thanks Wendy,
Unfortunately I have already re-built the scene..actually better than before (learn as you go). However your tips gave me an idea. I have just created a new folder on my desk top named "Carrara First Aid" in which I have placed your remedies. Next time I'll know what to try.
Thanks for the great tip.
Starboardtack
Agreed. I have never used DAZ's download manager, I just create a folder for each product's runtime, then add them as needed to Carrara's browser. For a new project, I reset Carrara to defaults which clears the browser of runtimes, but not other collections like clips, etc. I add keywords if needed to the folder titles so I can search in Windows Explorer. E.g. "DAZ Opus Magnum - Medieval Laboratory".
Wendy, that works if Carrara crashes (I've got a few old renders from March in there, along with about a billion zero-byte .compo files), but if you tell it you don't want to save, Carrara will delete the render file as it closes.
It's easy enough to recreate the render, it's just another 11 hours... (fortunately I usually render overnight for these long jobs)
Avoid saving using the compressed option.
One thing to consider if you use the network render nodes, is that when you do a network render, the scene file is copied to the temp folder on the node machine (on a Mac, Documents--> Daz3D folder). At least in my experience, Carrara's node does not empty the node's temp folder on its own. This can be a blessing if your file is corrupted on your main machine somehow. It can be a curse, because if you don't manually empty it, it is very easy to get hundreds of MBs of old data in there.
Good tip. The uncompressed files are plain text (you can open them in TextEdit / Notepad / whatever), and they also save & load much faster.
BTW, this is also true of uncompressed Studio and Poser files. And obj for that matter.
Carrara does like throwing up the odd "An error occurred saving this file" (and that's as helpful as it gets!), which is pretty annoying after it's spent 20 minutes saving out your 3xG2F + G2M + complex scene project. Saving uncompressed does seem to get rid of these.
Evil,
Hope all is well - thanks for dropping in.
Both you guys have lost me beginning with the network render nodes. .. "node machine" ? Am I right in assuming that it is the files shown below ?
If so these files should be deleted on a periodic schedule as Carrara will not do it by itself. Also to retrieve a crashed file..you do what with these files....
I have the feeling that much of this is going to go over my head...Something I should visit at later date when I know a lot more. So...
Perhaps, keeping it simple - I should just delete all the files in this folder, and continue to do it when the folder appears to have too many files.
Starboardtack
Ahoy Starboardtack :)
The files in your DazTemp folder are the temporary working files which Carrara creates for each new scene.
These are only left there if Carrara crashes or hangs and is forcibly closed.
You also have a bunch of Mov files gathering dust in there,...
If you render an image, or an animation, without giving it a File name and Location, then Carrara will save that image, or movie, into the Temp folder with a default "Doc" name.
You can delete any files in this folder, and it's good housekeeping to check it occasionally or whenever Carrara crashes.
The Carrrara Render nodes, are only used for network rendering where you have several systems networked together, the render nodes go on the slave systems.
If you're using a single system, you can ignore Render Nodes.
Hope it helps :)
Thank you for the well wishes! I had a few extra moments today. ;-)
Maybe it would have been clearer if I had said "client machine" instead? What I meant by node machine was another computer on your network that a Carrara Render Node had been installed on. Carrara usually clears out its scratch/temp folder when you quit Carrara- unless it crashes, in which case the old data is left in place. I have noticed that the Carrara Render Nodes do not empty their scratch/temp files even when they are quit normally. Depending on the scene, the scratch/temp folder on a client machine will contain many more files than the scratch/temp folder on the host machine. This is because the .car scene file is copied over, along with any image maps, distribution maps, etc. etc. that the .car scene file references. The exceptions are custom leaf shapes for Carrara plants and plugins. Those are stored in Carrara's data folder, etc. and need to also be installed into the Render Node's data, etc. folder.
Just a note about the Render Nodes: They are only meant to be installed on client machines, and not the machine with the main Carrara application. If they did get installed on the host machine (or if you only have one computer), then it is safe to un-install the nodes.