I started this topic off with a lament on the shortcomings of AM: I was pissed because I'd been working on a problem for days and it wasn't getting any better and I was thinking about going polygon. The people here convinced me to stick around, pointing out that the forum is a wonderful thing, which it is. To be able to have quite a few expert users run to your rescue at any time of day or night is remarkable in a world where most seem to be gaurding their trade secrets. Since I personally only have time to really learn one program well, and since I really do believe every program will have its dark pits in which to fall, I would much rather fall into friendly arms.

A couple of us thought it would be well to edit my first alarmist posting. I concur.

I had two or three problems having to do with combiner materials, bumps and hair, crashes, and successful and failed combinations of the three. If you've been having trouble with combiners, hair, bumps, crashes due to any of them and so forth, read on. The thread starts getting interesting about half way down this page, and gets to the heart of its issues half way down page 3.

Model on dudes (and dudettes). All the best,

Doug

The problem is exactly that. You wont find anything absolutely reliable. You need to save often and you need to be prepared for crashes.
But in the end: A:M v15 is quite reliable. If you got a problem, report it to A:M Reports (you need to register there again).

Which version are you using? Mac or Windows? In general it is said that A:M for Windows is a bit more crash-proove. So if you got a Mac you could try to run two OSes on your machine.

I dont know when you last time formated your harddrive or at least defragted your dirve. A clean re-install of A:M can work wonders sometimes too.

I would not recommend to move to another programm if you love splines. There is nothing near to what A:M is offereing there (even if you have much money).

IIf you can you could give the file (consolidated) to us and we could have a look at it. Maybe something went wrong sometime and someone of you can easily handle that?

*Fuchur*

yeah, what version are you using? And what are you using it on?

A:M has been great for me since v11. Crashes are exceedingly rare.

You're probably right. I save constantly and save models as individual files constantly, at least every six hours or so. I'll send you a consolidated file of this new glitch (I can't add hair without a crash). And my favorite old one is that I can't add bumps or displacement to ANY complex material, even a simple spherical one. I've worked around it. I even went out and got a new computer. It still won't do what I want. Maybe it's because I have some little program working in the background somewhere and I can't find it. I don't know. I still can't get bumps or hair. It's not some simple little thing I'm overlooking.

Anyway, I'm sending the consolidated file to the general "help" online. Let me know what you find. Probably you will say it works fine on your computer. Send it to me if it does. I could use an new computer anyway. Quad core if you have it.

I use windows. vista sucks.

Yours,
Doug ferrin

I use 15og. I've used every version since 3. I think 13 or 14 seemed to work best for me. Least crashes for me.

PS. How would you like the consolidation?

PPS. The specific problem here is that I can't add bumps, hair or complex materials in any combination without a crash. This is a problem I have had in general lately. Every newer version seems to make it worse. thanks for helping.
Doug

Just consolidating the project threw the eyes out of "dog"'s head and put his jaw to the left. More stuff to undo. I spend more time undoing things than I do doing things. Is it just me?

Here's a pic of before and after the consolidation.

I'm not sure why you are having so much trouble ..I have Windows 7 ...skipped Vista ..but I just did a simple project using sine /perlin and hair the sine material was used for the bump on the trunk try this project and see if it crashes

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment


give us some machine specs...too how much memory processor etc

You know there is a consolidate-button, right?
Go to "Project" > "Consolidate" > "Project as text-file" or "Project as text-file and zipped."

This will copy all the necessary informations of your project into a new folder (textures, models, soundfiles, the projectfile and so on) or Zip.
Upload the file here or / and to A:M reports and write (as precisly and objective as possible) step by step what you are doing.

This should help. I dont have the problem of undoing things. V14 is a strong version but v15 isnt much else for me and has been more bugproove on my machine.
(got an AMD PII 955 (Quadcore at 3.5 GHz each, so quite a storng machine...).

See you
*Fuchur*

OK, FUCHUR, that's what I did. Let me know if you have the file.

Thanks John. Everything worked fine except the leaves were not there. I'm running on an amc dual core, 2.6 gigahertz, 3 gigs of ram, gateway 5654, vista. Not a bad machine. Should be able to handle most stuff.

Doug

you have to turn on hair when you render


Click to view attachment


be sure you have that checked

Yes, I turned on hair to render. That's when it crashes, when I turn on hair. Even in the modeling window, when it is just previewing. Anyway, Let me send you the model. Add a complex materian, ie. sperical, turbulence et all. I've been adding them to the "dog not hair" group. Then throw in a hair material (I want the hair to render as the colors in the other material). Let me know if it works. I've tried every machination of the above than I can mention. Thanks for helping. Yours,
Doug

Let me get this straight, you downloaded John's tree test and it also crashed your computer when you turned on Hair?

I just downloaded the same project and it rendered fine with hair. I once had a recurring problem with an earlier version of AM and found that a completely clean install solved the issue. This is a last resort, since you would also have to go through the registry to clean any instance of AM. Hopefully you'll find an easier solution, but it's not AM that's causing your crashes.

rendered Jon's tree project on the Mac side no problems here
v15

There is a problem with Your model self, that causes this problem.
Please open a bugreport and attach there, Your unconsolidated (!) model (also the decal images You are using in this model) .

A short test have given the result , that Your problem is not a general problem with hair and complex materials .
Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Hey Douglas- I hope you get your crash problem fixed. I also hope you will stay with A:M and join us more frequently here on the forum. We could benefit from your perspective. Pretty impressive that you post your dilemma and get a half dozen people willing to lend their hands within 12 hours- including the head programmer! Let's see a poly app match THAT!

Tell us more about the Will Vinton days!

Yes, John, it's true. And a propos, thanks everyone for helping. Yoda, this is actually the second time I have built this character; I have sometimes suspected my 32 bit targa files created in photoshop as being the culprits, but had no real evidence. Sometimes the hair + images works, sometimes it doesn't. I have a newer version of PS I will use and see if that helps.

If it is the model, do you have any idea how to fix it? This kind of thing happens often, as you may have guessed, and so far I haven't found anything even resembling a consistent solution. That model was made entirely in 15.0g, within the last few days. It has no bones or relationships at this point, so those aren't an issue. I have tried several materials (having suspected they may be the gremlins), also all made fresh in 15.0g, even used a simple color in a grouping, all with the same results.

Again, thanks everyone for your help.

Doug

The dog model doesn't have any hair in the one material. It's all combiners and attributes. I had to cancel thru all the TGAs it was looking for since those weren't posted.

the render finished in 52 seconds

Click to view attachment


I don't know how "Consolidate" could mess a model up. All Consolidate does is save files to a common folder.




I notice that even if I choose TGAs I have to substitute for the ones it asks for only "Dog Neck spots Good1" gets an image assigned to it. the other Decasl have "none" as their image. That seems odd.

Thanks Rob - I don't understand the odd way the model went either - it's fine in the original file, in as much as it is not distorted. Nor do I get the decal thing.

Anyway, I'm going to start more or less "fresh" tonight with new decals - made in a new version of PS (I usually use an older one because there is a comfort thing there for me) - and materials. I'll post the outcome.
Doug

By any chance, do you have a shader set on the model? I've had issues in v15g with hair and shaders. I've went back to 15e (I have the cd), and everything works.

Hi. Just the built in shading - what you get with keyboard 9 or 0. And I have the shaded switch on instead of wireframe in the hair emitter. I was just going to reload 0e again. Otherwise it's just the same $&*!@ only tonight with a new twist: the hair doesn't take on any color from any color or material on the model. I used an old reliable hair emitter on it and it just crashed, and continues to do so. Let's see what happens with 0e. Thanks mtpeak.
Doug

the model you posted didn't have hair, right? There was no hair in any part of the material. I'm mystified at how you are having trouble with hair without putting any hair in the model?

Post model with actual hair in it and we'll have something to test. and if it has maps, post those too.

Click to view attachmentquote name='robcat2075' post='315463' date='Nov 19 2009, 11:11 PM']the model you posted didn't have hair, right? There was no hair in any part of the material. I'm mystified at how you are having trouble with hair without putting any hair in the model?

Post model with actual hair in it and we'll have something to test. and if it has maps, post those too.[/quote]


No mystery. When I saved the model I took the hair out because if I tried to do anything while the hair was attached, like save or do a quick render, it would crash. Here's a simple model I just made with hair, and the hair has no color. Let me see if the same happens for you, if you would be so kind.

I went back to 0e and still have the same problem with hair color. However, the program has stopped crashing. That's a start.
thanks for your time.
Doug

Here also is a screenshot of my model with colorless hair.

PS. If I use a difuse color in the hair emitter itself, it will carry a color. Also if I use a diffuse decal, it will choose one color to use. For example, I made a green background with red spots, but only the red would effect the hair color. The green areas stayed colorless.

Did you know a Polar Bear's hair is not white? It is clear. Interesting tidbit I just remembered.

Here's the Prj of my original model with colorless hair.

In it you will find a model, under flora, of a "plant" on which the hair emitters work fine. This earlier model and material were made in .0f. Somehow I can't seem to go back to that earlier, happier time.

While I can't exactly say this is encouraging, I hope it helps.

For the past year and a half I've been studying communications at a community college. I've proctored two computer labs, and helped a lot of people with a lot of problems, with a lot of programs.

I've seen people lose several hours of work when Adobe Premiere froze on them. I've personally lost work when After Effects crashed or froze up on me. Heck, I crashed AE earlier today.

I have a friend who will proudly extoll that he can crash ANY piece of 3D software in less than an hour. And this is a guy who has never even heard of A:M.

Crashes happen. The ONLY way to prevent having to redo hours of work is to make sure that you save often. Remember, Even Jesus saves! There's a 20 ft high neon sign near my house that reminds me he does every time I drive home...

The 12 steppers have a saying: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results each time. If the program crashes, and you recreated your steps exactly, the odds of crashing the program again increase. (However, if this DOES happen with A:M, you should let Hash Inc. know immediately, and they'll try to fix the problem.) Keep in mind, though, that with most any program, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Think of a different way to do what you want. Especially, think of the last thing you did before the crash, and change the steps slightly.

In addition to saving often, take frequent breaks. (And save each time you do.) The longer you work without a break, the more your frustration level increases. The more frustrated you are, the more devastating a crash will be.


Aside from that, you have to remember that software is not the only variable. The same software runs differently on different computers. Even computers with IDENTICAL configurations!

Click to view attachment


Just thought of another route you can take shift when you select the hair material and get the old hair..

this was a quick trial ..overdid the density and thickness

Thanks Brainmuffin. Excellent advice: I'm going to bed during which time I will give myself and my computer a break.

Probably I will use diffuse decals with an underlying texture to give it some pazaz and move on. But if anyone has a fix I would LOVE to hear it.

Doug

You mean hold down the shift key as I drag it? I just tried that and got the same old same old. Let me know if I misunderstood you though. Thanks,
Doug

Hi Douglas

I loaded your doghair nothing-else-works model into 15e (did not test in 15g) - and a couple of things stand out:

1) your model is quite large, (goes from -20 feet to 5 feet) - looks like it has missing splines, cps.

2) hair thickness is too thin, density too high for such a large model - stresses the heck outta my system - so I changed density to .1, increased thickness to 10". These were changed to those values only so I could see what's going on. You need to change those to how it works for you.

3) brightness was set at 300% - I changed that to 100%. Hairs would be toooo bright at 300%. I also set face camera = 0%. If you have it at 100%, hairs will flicker in animation (as well as contribute to making hair look too bright). I also changed kink scale to 0% - again for my purposes - kinky hair also increases processor requirements.

4) the decal you have driving the hair color does not cover the whole body - as you can see by the image I uploaded. That's why it isn't affecting the hair color for the whole body.

I too have had other crashing issues with 15g. That is why I am working in 15e. My guess is that the next release of 15 will address some of those issues.

Try playing with those properties and see what works for you.

Thank you Nancy -
I'll try tweeking the density et all - good idea. The reason the decal doesn't cover the body is because it was just a quick test. Within the test area, on my computer however, only the red is given to the hair and the green section remains colorless. I don't imagine that will change with whole-body coverage. I see the hair did turn green on your system, but that it's still colorless outside the patch. I am assuming you took that screenshot after adjusting density etc.

The missing splines are just in his one good leg - I haven't finished that yet. The little arms and stumpy leg are meant to be atrophied and useless. I want him to be boxy and rock-like. I forget what made me want to try hair on him before he was finished but something wierd happened that prompted me to do it. Glad I did too. Is there some other place that he looks incomplete to you? Let me know.

Thank you for your experiments and time. I appreciate it more than you can know. Yours,
Doug

Yes those screen images are after changing properties - I couldn't see the subtle color changes when hair was too thin.

The hairs, not affected by the decal, aren't colorless - they are the default color - white.

I took a look at your tga image (a dog color test.tga) in photoshop 6.0.1 - and looks like the alpha channel is all white - so the hairs that are affected by the decal should be either red or green - like it shows on my system.

Perhaps you are using an image file where the decal's alpha channel does not include the green? If your alpha channel is all white - then I don't know what the problem is. Perhaps try saving your tga as a 24 bit file (no alpha channel)?

EDIT: Ummm...on the off chance...Are you perhaps experiencing that you or your monitor might have some red/green color blindness? Nah, probably not - cause you can see it in the tga...

Why even have an alpha channel in the hair color decal?

Hi - well by God there is an alpha channel there. You're right Rob, I can't imagine why I might have put it there. In any case, I got rid of it and the same thing happens. Saved it as 24bit and ditto. Oh well. Thanks.
Doug

post a screen shot of what it looks like in A:M -

I assume you are also trying an ON screen render ? either with render lock mode or render mode? as well as rendering to file?

Before you left click on the hair ( see image) hold down shift key then click you'll get the old hair that might work if nothing else does

Click to view attachment

Post the new model and the maps now that you've done the things people suggested.

Yes, did all that. I will post the model et all later tonight. Thanks everyone.
Doug

OK, here's the end product, which isn't much different than when we started. The diffuse decal on Dog's back colors all the hair it's supposed to. It is haphazardly placed - but when I make something worth placing well, it should work. Otherwise, after going back and forth between program versions, trying the old hair (thanks for that; too bad it didn't work) etc. etc. not much has changed and I think the best solution will be to use decals to color the hair and materials. Ever since I upgraded to 15 materials and I haven't gotten along.

So, thanks again everyone. Here's the "final" model, as it were. I also found this old black and white 8mm clip of Dog's grandfather walking with his master.

I'm hoping Dog Jr. Jr. will have more grace to his movements, still, not much seems to have skipped a generation.

Doug

My first observations...

- the dog seems to display ok with Hair on or off.

- the dog has no decals on him, for hair or otherwise. should I expect some?

- Like Nancy I wonder at the enormous size that he is modeled. Is there a reason he needs to be 7 meters long?


But no crash so far. What's the next step that you can't get past?

Thanks Robcat. I don't know what I can't get past next. Thank you for asking. For whatever reason, hair is not effected by color, except, as I said, diffuse color decals on my system. I've reloaded the software ad nausium, and after all the suggestions of the past couple of days and my own best efforts, it seems I just need to work around it.

There should be a decal patch on Dog's back, but it just showed that the difuse decals worked - I may have sent it without it, but it was nothing much to look at in any case. It's not readily visible because it's a property decal. If you're interested though I'll show him to you when he's finished.

I didn't even notice how big he was to tell the truth. But I think I got into the habit of making big models years ago because (don't know if this is still true or not) if I dragged something into a chor and had to shrink it way way down, once it got small enough it would only render in bound mode. I found if I started with a bigger model that didn't happen. At the time it was a quick fix. Why, you may ask, didn't I just make everything else bigger? Simply because I wanted to keep the grid on certain landscapes and if I made them too big, so long grid.

Glad you mentioned it however. I believe I have noticed big models slowing things down a little, and wrestling with partical and material sizes is time consuming. Basically I was just doing it because I was used to doing it.

Thanks again.
Doug

Doing some simple tests, I find that you are right. By default, hair should take on the color of the surface it is growing from. I tried it in V11 and it works but in V15 it doesn't.

Sorry for that aggravation.

I've submitted an AMReport on that item.


In the meantime it looks like decal is the only way to color hair.

It is possible in V15 to "bake" your combiner material colors into a decal. i suppose that could be switched to behave as a hair color decal.

Ahhhh...not true.

It has changed - HOWEVER - it has changed for the better

You can change the hair color by changing the diffuse color of the emitter - therefore the group surface and hair color & other properties can be different. This solves the problem of wanting the group surface to be transparent, whilst keeping the hair opaque.

Gawd ...I hope it doesn't get changed back.

That isn't new, hair had that before.

That's a setting that would override the default of taking the color from the surface. If you haven't made an emitter setting the hair, the hair should still take its color from the surface color.

Doug is trying to create multicolored hair by coloring the surface with a combiner material and that SHOULD work. You'd couldn't do that by setting emitters. (actually you might if you put different hair emitters in a combiner).


Here's a test in V11

Click to view attachment

the upper left is default hair taking its color from the surface.

The upper right is the same Hair material but with the emitter color set to green.

The lower left show the same hair taking its color from a surface with a combiner on it

in each case there is just one hair system on the model.

Here's the V11 prj which will load in V15 but the hair won't result the same. Click to view attachment

okey dokey - I see now that I didn't understand Doug wanting to use a material (not a decal) to color the hair. I thought he was trying to use decals, and that he was having a problem with the alpha and/or coverage.

It might have been some other distant fantasy A:M version (I think I recall that happening) that the emitter took on the group properties (color, etc) and one couldn't make the emitter opaque if the group was transparent.

I am afraid I should have been clearer from the get-go. I assumed everyone was trying to color their hair with materials, as I like to do, using decals for length and density mostly, and would immediately understand my anguish.

I don't know if you remember another post I put up a while back about not being able to have a bump or displacement map with a combiner material. It just occours to me maybe no one has noticed that either because all the youngsters are using those crazy decals (I'm actually not that old), which used to be costly in terms of rendering time. On my machine, even adding a bump (within the material) to, say a turbulent, spherical, checker or gradient combiner (without any actual turbulence added within the material) I get no color. When I lay a bump decal on a combiner material, same thing: the model goes white and only the bumps render. Same with displacement. Fractal, on the other hand, does work, ie. bumps, with complex materials.

Again, I've worked around this by using decals and again that has been frustrating.

If anyone wants to give it a shot and see if the same thing happens chez toi, I'd be interested in hearing what happens.

Here's the recipe:

Take a combiner material and drop it onto a model. Make a bump map. Apply the bump map to the model. And presto! No color. It's easy and anyone can do it.


If you don't have any decals on hand, try this:

Make a combiner material. Click on the material name and in properties, add bump of any percentage. Again, you should have a handsome colorless model.

And again, maybe it's just me and my machine. Thanks everyone.
Doug

They probably saw it didn't work and tried something else. But now we know it should work!

There was a very nice demo for V11 that used materials to color hair so it really should work.





See that simple prj I made to test hair color? The way to track these things down is to reduce it to as few variables as possible so you can show that it is one particular thing that has broken. Testing five doubtful things at once... hard to draw conclusions.


If I find something doesn't work as I expected I like to back up and start with something simple that works as expected then add one element at a time until it doesn't, then i know there's something weird about the last thing I added. Or maybe I was adding it wrong. But it's a lot easier to get answers on this forum if you present them with the one thing that has broken, and then move on from whatever solves that one thing.


make a simple test case that shows one thing failing and post that. Your description of it is hazy to me. Adding a bump map to a material? In general a material doesn't have any maps to it. SO you must mean something else.

Doug, I tried your example of a checker combiner and a bump map in both A:M14.0c and in A:M15.0g and I get very different results. Not what you describe but not what I would expect.

A:M14 handled everything without any problems but A:M 15 took longer and the render looked like it it had Ambiance set to maximum. So over exposed that the bump wasn't visible. A few seconds after rendering the image vanished in the realtime display. I could still do a quick render of it but it wouldn't show up in the realtime display. It looks like there is a bug in A:M15g so maybe you should report it and fall back to A:M 14 until it can be fixed.

Poor old Steffen is getting snowed under.

Maybe I have a machine ,who is loving me ...., or I didn't understand what You would do
Click to view attachment

One bootleneck , Render mode doesn't work in this case if You select the whole model or the complete viewport , but render lock works also the final render .

Are you setting the bump map to "bump" after you apply it? Maps default to "color" initially.

Post your test case, so we can see what's different about yours and Steffen's.


Here's my test of your recipe. The bump map works, but not in regular render (top)! Only in progressive render or Multipass (bottom). Hmmm...

Click to view attachment



here's the model to try. Anyone else have only progressive render work?

Click to view attachment

OK, Robcat, here is the bump issue as clearly as I could illustrate it. The first 8 images deal with bump decals on models, and images 9-11 deal with bump textures created within a material and put onto a model. I hope my effort here clearly shows the problems I am having with bumps. I have done dozens of tests over the past few months, starting projects from scratch, in every version of 15 and the same things happen. None of it happened in V14, but unfortunately my version of 14 was strictly subscription and I have not successfully been able to reload it and use it. Anyway, that's an issue for another day.

Meanwhile, Here is a fully illustrated e-booklet (in color!) of what we shall call "The Smirking Rictus of the Flat Bump", otherwise to be known as "Bumps in the Night" (Get it? Can't see these bumps? Can't see bumps when it's dark. Aren't the kind of bumps you hear?) Thanks,

Doug


I am including the .prj that my (lavish) illustrations were made from. Bump map is a separate file called "bumps.jpg". The original is a grayscale tga but it wouldn't upload. This should work the same as the tga.
DF

Try your steps 1-6 with multipass on for the render. Just 2 or three passes is all you need to test.

I can confirm in 15e PC, rendering with multipass OFF - that bumps will not render - where there is a gradient material on a surface that ALSO has decaled bump maps.

However, the bumps will render if multipass = ON. I noticed it

HERE - when Bumps go boom

If you remove the material the bumps come back. I suspect this is a related problem, but I haven't re-read this thread to really know.

Forgive me if it's not.

Addendum:

Two More Things, hopefully for clarity's sake:

1) Here (#12) is the model WITH the same decal, set to Bump, and NO material. There is also NO surface color added to the model or any groupings within it. Indeed, with no material added, the bump map bumps fine on the model.

2) I'm throwing in #13 because I figure the question, or statement, "Yeah, but it works fine with a solid color," will come up. Yes it does. Bump maps should, however, work (and it would be very nice and time-saving for me if they did) on models with combiner materials, and the colors from said combiner materials, if they have a bump imbedded in them, should not disappear from the models. I haven't thought to try a combiner material with a bump built in with hair.

If these last two don't make things clearer for you, please ignore them.


Doug