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dribbling wreck
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dribbling wreck // Archive: Tech Forum
Post by Burnart // Oct 2, 2007, 1:38pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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In dribble I have been trying to get the gi and area lights thing working. I know you have to set the light intensity in the area light parameters high - I'm starting around 20 (normally I wouldn't use anything greater than 2). I've added 0.1 ambient illumination (luminance) to the objects shaders in the scene. I tick the various boxes on the dribble gi tab. I've also tried leaving all of dribbles other attributes on their default settings as well as altering them.
The problem I am having is that when I hit the dribble render button (or the render to file) tS simply vanishes and I'm left staring at my desktop and cprompt running the 3Delight license. In general I have found during my dribble experiements that tS has crashed more than usual but during these gi experiments its reached ridiculous proportions - I'm getting about 1 successful render in 10 attempts. I've tried different scene setups, different kinds of lights. As far as I can tell the only things that are different from my earlier successful dribble tests are the use of ambient brightness in the shader and high light intensity setting in the light parameters. With dribble I have been setting all lights for ray and transparent shadows. (Typing this now I think I should try non-transparent shadows! - when I get home.)
Is anyone else experiencing this behaviour? More importantly have you resolved it? |
Post by SiW // Oct 2, 2007, 7:54pm
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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Is this now on any scene, or specific scenes that you're doing these area light + GI tests?
I'm aware of only a couple of crashing scenarios:
- If a particularly odd combination of SSS settings is sent to 3Delight (which shouldn't happen with the restricted SSS features in this first dribble release)
- A "bad" texture is sent through the image converter (third party) |
Post by Burnart // Oct 2, 2007, 8:37pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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I've actually stripped the texture maps and procedurals out of some of these scenes as part of my testing and still it crashes. 3dfrog posted a simple scene for gi which I will try out but I haven't had a chance yet. If it works I'll compare it to my scenes and see if I can spot whats different.
The problems have occured on a number of scenes not just one - I'm running XP home on a 3ghz dual core with 2gb ram and a 256mb graphics card some I'm confident the machine is up to the task.
BTW I have also gone through complete machine restarts after these unexpected program exits just to make sure it wasn't a current session glitch. |
Post by Burnart // Oct 3, 2007, 12:59pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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The pic is a nice silvery ball gi rendered in dribble with an area light - I resisted the urge to have a chequered floor! Set this scene up from scratch - nothing in it but what you see. It worked! I then started to compare this to my scenes that kept falling over and spotted something different.
When I set up scenes I tend to put all the default lights onto a separate layer. They are usually left on as working lights when I'm building the objects and the scene but I turn the layer off in favour of scene specific lighting when I render. In dribble layers are not recognised in that way - lights on a layer that is turned off still render their lighting (I think!) so when dealing with working lights in dribble I had just been sliding the light intensity down to zero when I wanted to render.
So I went back to some of my fall-over scenes removed the zero intensity working lights and tried a dribble render and it worked. Of course to complete the test I put the working lights back and tried a render to see what would happen. Damned if they didn't render!!!
:confused::confused::confused:
Last night I couldn't get dribble/tS to fallover and the night before I couldn't get them not to fallover. Poltergeist maybe?
EDIT: Nice soft render though - now I had better concentrate on creating an actual image to use it on rather than just rendering primitives. |
Post by Burnart // Oct 3, 2007, 3:07pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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Just a thought. Perhaps my original working lights were created on the workspace side - I can't remember. Would that make a difference? |
Post by SiW // Oct 3, 2007, 5:28pm
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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It.. could make a difference. Re: layers, I must confess that not adhering to layer visibility was an oversight. As I think it's a pretty big oversight, I'll fix this tomorrow seeing as the update isn't coming tonight. |
Post by Burnart // Oct 3, 2007, 5:54pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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Thanks SiW - look forward to the update when you are ready. :) |
Post by Burnart // Oct 4, 2007, 1:10pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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Alas the saga continues.
Last night I tried to render something in dribble for a project I'm working on and it fell over in exactly the same way as previously described. This time I was looking at an hdri render rather than gi.
Restarted got the scene up and running. Deleted and replaced the lights re-hooked up the hdri image - made sure the "probe" method was selected. Collapsed any sds objects into meshes. Moved all objects onto the base layer. Saved it under a new scene name. Clicked the dribble render button and it fell over. Aaaaargh! I wasn't going to have another evening of pointless frustration so I went to bed and read a book instead!
This morning I decided to try again and using the version I'd saved the previous night I hit the dribble render button and this time it rendered!!!!!
Something to do with odd and even numbered days? Actually I think poltergeist is still the most likely cause. |
Post by SiW // Oct 5, 2007, 8:22am
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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If it were possible for you to upload this scene somewhere (for my testing purposes only; you can PM or email me the link, or just email the file if it's small enough) I'd appreciate it.
I still think the problem is related to images (even if your scene contains no textures) which means it should go away with my current change to the image i/o. |
Post by jamesmc // Oct 5, 2007, 8:35am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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dribble doesn't work at for me. Installed and does nothing but shows the icons. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 5, 2007, 8:47am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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James, did you install 3Delight?
-Jack. |
Post by jamesmc // Oct 5, 2007, 8:49am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Yes, it's installed and re-installed (both of them actually) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 5, 2007, 8:52am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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So the dribble bar shows up in model side? |
Post by jamesmc // Oct 5, 2007, 9:10am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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So the dribble bar shows up in model side?
Yep.
Here it is in er inaction. :) |
Post by SiW // Oct 5, 2007, 10:17am
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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It does sound like 3Delight isn't being found. Whenever 3Delight gets re-installed you should re-install dribble to make sure the needed files are in the 3Delight directories.
Couple of questions:
- Do you see any status messages (briefly?) when you hit the dribble render buttons?
- Does the file dialog come up when you press the dribble render-to-file button?
- Can you make sure these files exist under your 3Delight directory: displays\tsdd.dpy shaders\tS*.sdl |
Post by jamesmc // Oct 5, 2007, 10:20am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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I found where it does render, but it doesn't deliver to the path I set it too.
Instead, it inexplicably shows up as a Microsoft Office Scanning file on my desktop with very poor results.
Screenshots below. It was supposed to be a sphere with a brass shader. No blur was checked.
The path I set it too for saving the file wasn't to my desktop. The file always get saved as "Default" but the property says its a TIFF file, which cannot be opened by any program that I have except the Microsoft Scanning Document program.
I tried to save it to different formats, all with the results you see below.
Third image is the render with tS7.5 standard render in Model room. |
Post by SiW // Oct 5, 2007, 11:28am
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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Path issues aside, the fact that the background is black and the sphere looks like that tells me that dribble's shaders are not correctly installed for 3Delight.
My suggestion is to:
Close tS if it's open.
1. Uninstall 3Delight
2. Install 3Delight
3. Reboot
4. Install dribble
Once I'm finished with this update I'll prepare instructions on how to make sure the required files are where they should be and other troubleshooting info. |
Post by jamesmc // Oct 5, 2007, 12:18pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Path issues aside, the fact that the background is black and the sphere looks like that tells me that dribble's shaders are not correctly installed for 3Delight.
My suggestion is to:
Close tS if it's open.
1. Uninstall 3Delight
2. Install 3Delight
3. Reboot
4. Install dribble
Once I'm finished with this update I'll prepare instructions on how to make sure the required files are where they should be and other troubleshooting info.
Done all that already, three times now.
I'll wait until there is a proper installer, so don't rush on my account. |
Post by SiW // Oct 5, 2007, 2:21pm
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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I'll wait until there is a proper installer
Well I'm not sure what makes the current installer not "proper" - it checks to make sure 3Delight is already installed and automatically adds the shaders + display driver there, and also makes sure you install the rest of dribble under trueSpace. I think the only way I could make this more "one click" would be to include 3Delight in my installer, but I can't do that.
Of course, automation can sometimes fall over like it's apparently doing here, which is why it might be a good idea if I write out instructions for a manual install. |
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