Getting frustrated with bugs... 2005-06-03 - By Morten Bartholdy
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Joel,
Your rendertree issues sound like you may need a different driver for your
GeForce. It may seem odd, but my past experience is that the latest driver
may not be the one that works best for XSI, or any given app.
Unfortunately since it is not a certified card, you will have to try for
yourself or find a list of "good" version online.
The X format thing - don't know.
MB
-- -- Original Message -- --
From: "Joel Blackwell" <joel@(protected)>
To: <XSI@(protected)>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: Getting frustrated with bugs...
> Thanks to all who've posted responces so far... I appreciate it! It was
> a little daft of me not to post some of the problems I'm having, so I'll
> do so now.
>
> Firstly, I'm running a GeforceFX 5600 (and have run with a number of
> different drivers.. currently the latest) I've had no major issues,
> graphics wise.
>
> Now for some problems: Simple things, like creating two layers for a
> simple shader, and then attaching a texture to each. Then, half of the
> time I can't disconnect the textures at all from the layers (mainly a
> problem for the tree view) and the other half of the time, they do
> disconnect, but not visually, so I can't tell what's connected to what
> until I hit refresh.
>
> Then (usually while trying to disconnect the textures from the first
> problem) If I hit right mouse a few too many times in the tree view, XSI
> crashes. Even though it tells me it successfully saves, when I load XSI
> again and try to recover the scene, it tells me the scene is the wrong
> version (version 420 or something along those lines) and then proceeds
> to tell me it requires version 420. It then crashes again.
>
> Here's one from XSIbase...
>
> I loaded in an X format model with textures (not made by myself) and
> found it to have a red tint to it. I adjusted the ambient lighting for
> the materials to grey, and wondered why, even though the textures were
> grey in colour, the model still retained the red tint in the 3D view.
> However, the model rendered exactly as I thought it should look (that
> is, with grey ambience). Long story short- after a lot of
> experimentation, I found the problem to be that the model's texture was
> connected to the diffuse port of the phong shader. I'd adjusted the
> phong's ambience from red to grey, but XSI didn't change it fully. If I
> disconnected the texture and reconnected it again, the ambience was set
> back to red (again) and when I then changed it to grey, it fixed the
> problem.
>
> Very strange, and for those wondering, I checked the scene ambience.
> Really odd things like this keep popping up the more I work in the
> render tree... weird anomalies that keep me busy for hours, rummaging
> through the manual, trying to find out why it's happening.
>
> It's things like those that I encounter all over the place and make me
> wonder if anyone bothered to test XSI at all before releasing it. I'm
> sure that I'm overreacting somewhat at the moment... and you guys are
> right, they're not the biggest problems in the world. But, it'd be nice
> to have someone say, "Hey, we're going to get those things fixed, so
> people don't start comparing XSI to Truespace 3!"
>
> -Joel
>
>
>
> Morten Bartholdy wrote:
> > Joel I do remember you ;) and I'm not sure my answer will be of much
help,
> > but here goes:
> >
> > I use XSI on lots of different hardware combinations including a few
> > consumer gfxcards and though I do run in to the occasional bug or crash,
> > V4.2 appears very stable for my use, which is any flavor of 3D & VFX for
> > commercials and feature film alike. So I get around in the app and I
can't
> > recognize your problems. I know this does not help you much, but it
leads me
> > to think you are either suffering from a very incompatible gfxcard (you
> > don't say which one), or bad hardware - perhaps memory.
> >
> > You say it happens when working with shaders, so what exactly is it you
do?
> > Do you tweak parameters on existing ones or write your own? Granted -
> > tweaking shaders with the renderregion active causes hangups or crashes
now
> > and then, but although annoying, nothing I would call serious flaws. The
> > only times I have experienced repeated crashes or the like, was when I
was
> > beating what ought to be a dead horse, and was too tired to think of
> > reasonable workarounds or even a better solution. In my experience
(having
> > taught 3D at several schools in my country) those that keep running into
> > trouble with the app often keep using it in ways that may provoke
certain
> > weaknesses in the sw. I am not saying that is what you do - I am only
trying
> > to give you pointers regarding how to work on fixing your specific
problem.
> >
> > When you say no-one seems to care about your problems, bear in mind that
if
> > it is a gfxcard issue, it could be fixed for an amount equalling a few
hours
> > work for many professionals on this, and though I understand your pain,
and
> > appreciate that you may not be in a position to aquire a certified card,
you
> > may need to understand why others might not be bothered.
> >
> > You might get more help from some of all the good guys residing here if
you
> > provide a bit more specific info about the nature of your predicament. I
am
> > no hardware expert, but I have used XSI on several consumer cards
including
> > even an old GeForce 2 GTS, and apart from performance and OGL accuracy
they
> > are not much different from Wildcats, Fire or nVidia FX cards for
average
> > daily use, so I am curious to know which card you are using.
> >
> >
> > Best regards
> >
> > Morten Bartholdy
> > 3D & VFX Artist
> > Denmark
> >
> >
> >
> > -- -- Original Message -- --
> > From: "Joel Blackwell" <joel@(protected)>
> > To: <XSI@(protected)>
> > Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 12:39 PM
> > Subject: Getting frustrated with bugs...
> >
> >
> >
> >>I'm considering selling XSI, mainly because I'm finding it hard to learn
> >>the program, due to the fact I run into a bug every few minutes when
> >>working with shaders. Every time I post about the problems (on a
> >>forum), someone pipes up and tells me something like, "You must have
> >>missed something." or, "The problem must be with your graphics card."
> >>Perhaps either one of those could be true, since I'm not using a
> >>certified card, and I'm no XSI know-it-all. However, no one seems to
> >>care if the problem could actually be worth looking to. My posts just
> >>disappear into nothingness, never to be seen again. Seemingly, my only
> >>solution I have is- risk paying some money for a certified card (which
> >>is beyond my price range at the moment) that may not fix the problems
> >>I've been seeing anyway.
> >>
> >>This is obviously a great community for people who work in a
> >>professional environment, and have money to throw around everywhere for
> >>proper support and the hardware to suit a professional pipeline. But,
> >>for people like myself, XSI seems more and more the poorer program to go
> >>with. Softimage may be doing everything they can to increase their
> >>userbase, but the program just isn't designed for the average person...
> >>and right now, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I mean, why develop a
> >>program for certified (non-gamer) cards, and then aim the program at mod
> >>makers for games? It just doesn't make any sense.
> >>
> >>That aside, does anyone have some advice for me? Last time I posted on
> >>this mailing list everyone tried to kill me as the marauding invader
> >>from the land of Truespace (if anyone remembers that fiasco). This
> >>time, I'm hopeful that won't happen again, and someone will help me get
> >>this program working as it should. Or, the Softimage crew will actually
> >>note down some bugs to be fixed, so I don't have to sell XSI and move
> >>onto something that works.
> >>
> >>Thanks.
> >>
> >>-Joel
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> >>
> >
> >
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