file-stripping & featurette request

[spinner]

Hi

I love the text-format of the tgd-files, but I have a question:
Why is it that TG2 retains information on old files, or paths upon saving, even though these have been removed from the scene?

For example - I have a scene with tree1.obj, textured with tree1.jpg texture. When I remove both from the scene, I sometimes still get calls for the files upon opening in the error-log.
I  strip remnants in the files from the calls manually by opening the tgd in Eclipse or EditPad depending on my workstation, but is there a way of avoiding this in general? is selecting and pressing delete not enough?

Also - feature(ette) request: Autosave and Resume Render. On Sunday, a 60hr (and STILL not done!) render went down the toilet because Windows in it's infinite wisdom decided to override my no, and reboot anyway. v v annoying. Hence - autosave during long renders, with resume render option, so it's not all lost in case something happens

~s

[Oshyan]

Are you sure you've deleted all the nodes relating to those external files? I don't think it intentionally (or even accidentally) keeps any old data around (unlike MS Word ).

- Oshyan

[Dune]

I fully agree with Spinner about autosave! That would be a tremendous feature. What would be better still, is repeated, incremental autosave, say every 10 minutes (or what you perhaps could give it). So if your pc crashes, the latest part of your (long) render is still there, and only needs another partly renders for a stitch. But I wouldn't know if that's possible with the render buckets and all.

And perhaps a reminder somewhere of how full your tempfiles are. I crashed TG when I first started playing with it, because I filled my complete C with temp renders. Just a few kB left. Now I have to manually empty the lot every now and then. Perhaps it's even possible to allocate space on another partition in a future update?

---Dune

[spinner]

Are you sure you've deleted all the nodes relating to those external files? I don't think it intentionally (or even accidentally) keeps any old data around (unlike MS Word ).

- Oshyan

Yes, I am sure :-)
I had a file for distribution which *had* to be stripped, because the recipient was going to populate it.
I removed all instances of the vegetation meshes, and calls to their textures.
Nothing showed in the object & node view, and when I loaded the file after saving it stripped, it kept asking me for a file which had been removed.
To stop the nagging I went into the file and removed the call manually.
What I think *may* have happened, is that I did not close TG after I removed the files and saved, and I populated again with something different, shortly after. So maybe something from cache got written to file, and got saved?

Featurette:
Great idea, Dune :-)

~s

[Tangled-Universe]

I certainly agree with an autosave-feature. Last week I tinkered for a couple of hours with TG2, made some very nice and important adjustments and when I copy/pasted a node it crashed. I usually make incremental saves every 20 minutes or so, but an autosave (increments for 5 minutes for example) would still be great when TG2 still tends to crash unexpected/unexplainable.

[Oshyan]

As we've discussed before, saving an entire in-progress render to disk is not a trivial task. It's something that would be nice to implement, but it's challenging. As far as doing that on a regular basis, every 10 minutes, much less 5, would probably kill your render times as it would likely be a CPU and/or disk intensive process. So, not bad ideas, just challenging and potentially impractical.

- Oshyan

[jo]

Hi,

I think T-U is talking about saving project files though?

Actually, T-U, you weren't copying and pasting during rendering were you?

Regards,

Jo

[Oshyan]

I was responding to Dune's request actually.

- Oshyan

[jo]

Hi Oshyan,

I was responding to Dune's request actually.

Fair enough, reading comprehension at a bit of a low lately :-).

Regards,

Jo

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi,

I think T-U is talking about saving project files though?

Actually, T-U, you weren't copying and pasting during rendering were you?

Regards,

Jo

no no no don't touch TG2 while rendering, rule #1
And yes, I was talking about saving project files.
Compared to previous versions the unexpected crashes of the software have reduced quite much but unfortunately it still crashes unexpected and especially when copy/pasting like I said. A pity it's not reproducible and therefore hard to put a finger on.
As long there is no solution for this an autosave option might be a good feature to have.

Martin

[Tangled-Universe]

Jo,

How about copy/pasting nodes when the preview is rendering? Just out of curiousity.

[jo]

Hi Martin,

How about copy/pasting nodes when the preview is rendering? Just out of curiousity.

Well, that shouldn't be a problem but I have a sneaking suspicion that the crashes you mention may be caused by the preview rendering. I certainly not certain about that though :-).

Regards,

Jo

[spinner]

Backtracking a little; Even Bryce does a resume render, and Max has a backup or autosave function on crash - if something happens, Max politely asks whether it should try and save the file - a resume render function could be built in here. I'm with T U on what should be saved - i wasnt aware anyone worked on/w TG2 when rendering, or tinkered w the nodes; that's begging for problems. I always save before i do a final render, but that doesn't help when you're 60 hrs down the rendering line, with probably 60 more to go - especially when you're on a deadline; Images you need to be able to set at 300 DPI for paper print take time, and it costs in time and money when that render stops and needs to be restarted

~s

(who works in SWE/3D, the fact something is not a trivial thing doesnt mean it shouldnt be looked at ;-) )