Whenever I open a model or choreography (which opens models), My Choreography folder in the PWS is instantly populated with a bunch of folders called "Rotoscopes." They can be selected (and thereby deleted), but they don't open. They don't seem to have an adverse effect on anything, but it is a little annoying to go in and delete them. I wanted to know if this is happening to anyone else before I do a report.

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Do any of your models have any rotoscopes with missing images?

Just deleting them in A:M doesn't mean they won't come back - any material files, action files, chors, models potentially will also get contaminated - You have to go thru each file type (associated with the offending model) and search for rotocontainer pairs in a text editor - and delete all those empty pairs that look something like: (can't remember exactly)

<rotocontainer>
</rotocontainer>

If you don't purge all the files, then this will come back in droves and droves. And multiply exponentially.

As Mark said - it probably? (don't know for sure) starts with a model that had rotoscopes (used for modeling) that didn't get deleted before using in a chor. I believe have also noticed this viral behavior occur when playing with changing rotos in chors

None that I can find. In fact, they don't even have rotoscopes saved into them. This just started with the latest version.

did you examine the files with a text editor? and which files did you examine?

Just started doing that when I read your post, Nancy. They do have the Rotocontainer tags. I guess it's a matter of identifying which models are causing it and then editing them. Hopefully not too many of them do... I've made a lot of models recently. Thanks!

Hmmm... Can't seem to find a way to completely eliminate them. I've gone to every model file in the choreography and deleted any rotocontainer tags. Then I reopen the choreography folder and two rotoscopes folders appear. I close it again and reopen it and it will have five rotoscope folders.

Most peculiar.

examine your material files as well - and any other files that are brought in with the chor (including the chor)

Thanks, Nancy! I just figured that out (to my great dismay). :-)

I did a finder search by contents of a file, so I've now got a whole list of files with rotocontainer tags to go through. Figure I'll eliminate every instance I can find and then try again....

Oops ... it looks like you guys figured it out!

...And the Finder is saying they are all fixed.

At least now I know what to look for if it starts happening again!

Thanks!

I have had this pop up numerous times not only with empty rotoscope folders, but also with "Choreography actions" out the wazzooo....

RULE OF THUMB.......Don't save models when you have choreographies, actions open....For some reason, the software dumps and mutiplies these lines of code in the models and texture files...

ALSO....don't save projects because this can really fill/ load the files involved with these nasty corruptions..

Hopefully this will be fixed because it can destroy your files and make them unloadable.


William

I have had to fix these more than once.....by Opening the model, material, or choreography up in a text editor...

When you scroll down the text you will suddenly see the long list of duplicate text lines....Shift select them and erase them and then save the file in the text editor.

That should fix it...

Thanks, William. I seem to be all back to normal.

Can someone devise a simple example case that causes this problem?

Finding the repeatable steps is 90% of getting it fixed.

thats 90% of the problem - difficult to pin down repeatable sequence of steps to make it occur the first time (for me - I've tried) -

I think? I seem to notice it if I've been fooling around with rotos in the chor (changing the image used a lot of times). If I delete chor and empty roto shows in pws, and then save a model, material, etc, then that model may or may not be contaminated.

just tried and was able to make it happen this way - but not exactly sure of steps - someone please confirm

1) start new chor with some thom model known not to be contaminated
2) give camera a rotoscope with some image
3) make thom front projected (not sure this is necessary)
4) change camera roto image being used (couple of times?) - delete camera roto, add another roto (not sure necessary)
5) delete chor from pws - empty roto shows in pws (this is the first symptom)
6) save the thom model with new name
7) start new project
8) import newly saved thom model
9) observe that empty roto container comes up - confirming Thom is contaminated

If A:M wants to fix this.

1. Don't allow the program to save “containers” that the model files, Choreography files, and other do not use.

2. Purge out “containers”that have no content.

3. Set up some parameters so the program will use it to consolidate “containers” that multiple models or others are using.

This may not solve the original problem but it fixes the problem that comes from it.

I just duplicated Nancy's steps and had the same result. The model before saving had no '<ROTOCONTAINER></ROTOCONTAINER>' and after had 1.

The problem after making the containers or in this case rotoscope, if you save the model or models in the project A:M will save the containers/rotoscope it the model.

And unless you clean it out and force all of the models to save. It will pop up again when you reopen the project. And the rotoscope problem it seems to multiply like rabbits. This maybe happening because each file has a copy of the rotoscope and they don’t consolidate.

In the meantime, until this get fixed:

The workaround that I have been using to not corrupt any new models, or materials, is that I first delete any phantom roto folders that show up in the pws before ever saving any of the "pure" models.

If you do not delete the phantom roto folders that show up in the PWS, then any new models, materials will get contaminated when they are saved.

However, once a model, material, chor is corrupted, it seems like the only fix is to edit those files with a text editor