File Corruption Woes

[billg60]

I am having repeated issues with a project where the file becomes corrupted. I am pretty sure it has to do with painted shader as I am able to recover the file by opening in text editor and deleting an XML block labeled as <custom>. I can actually repeat problem having a file that will open without issue but any saved-as version of the file will not open (TG crashes upon opening). I run with the command line version and can see the app fails with an unhandled exception on a painted shader. It am at the point where I am stuck as I cannot save new versions that can be opened. I need some advice please as I have 6 months invested in this project! I have referenced the last version of my file that will open but crashes on any save-as versions.

The file is fairly large (2.8MB compressed without objects) so I had to save it over at terragen.org under post http://www.terragen.org/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=get567

Bill

[jo]

Hi,

Unfortunately your problem does relate to the painted shader. It doesn't function correctly and can crash when the amount of data reaches a certain limit. The work around is really to use a number of painted shader nodes as opposed to one big one, if you see what I mean. I'm embarassed this hasn't been fixed yet and will try and it get it dealt with as a high priority bug.

Regards,

Jo

[AlexK]

Disclaimer: I posted the exact same question in another thread http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=9529.new#new. This thread is different enough to warrant its own post I think. If this is regarded as spamming posts, please let me know.

I found this post while searching for paint shader related crashes. Has there been any effort to fix this bug? I am evaluating Terragen 2 for a project and painting clouds (as described here http://www.mrlamppost.com/tg2/guides/paintsky.htm) is crucial to me. Is there a way to know when this limit has been reached? What is that limit? Like 10 strokes? 100 strokes? Any advice would be welcome.

[Oshyan]

We're consistently working on determining the cause and addressing it, but it's a tricky problem to track down. There is no specific limit, it depends on length and number of strokes, and thus probably overall amount of data (although that is not a certainty at this point). Use of multiple painted shaders and frequent *incremental* saving should allow you to build up a scene with reasonable ease and data security overall. We'll fix the underlying issue as soon as we can.

- Oshyan