Hi
I'm using the free techdemo, latest release and i cannot see what i'm possibly doing wrong when it crashes constantly as i try to save my landscape. Or is the software actually this unstable ?! my scene wasn't even complex, only a small landscape file without any shaders, displacement or anything else created. This instability is almost worse than 3dsmax.. :(
Should it be like this ?
/ Magnus
Open a new instance of Terragen. Don't do anything to it. Save the file. Does it crash?
It certainly should not be that unstable. What version of Terragen are you using? Are you a registered user and do you have the latest Technology Preview 4? Are you using an English version of Windows? Does it crash if you save to C:\, or only when you save to your home or "my documents" folder? Are there any special characters in the file or directory path you use to save?
- Oshyan
Greg: I tried that, after restarting it 6 times it finally managed to save the scenefile.
Oshyan: No it should not be like this, but it is. And each time i tried to save it also corrupted the scenefile so if i attempted to load it again it came in empty and with some sorta errormessage saying the file was corrupted. I'm using the free non-commercial edition of Terragen 2 technology preview 2 build 1.9.04.1
I'm using XP64 SP2 (english edition) on a quadcore with 8gb ram. It crashed when i saved the file to any hdd, not just C or D or any other folder. It was constant. The filename was not that strange either, i had a _ symbol in it but i can't see that it should cause those crashes and then suddenly make it work again after i tried saving 6 times.
/ Magnus
What do you mean, you restarted it six times? Uninstall and reinstall; somethings broken.
Yes i restarted Terragen 2 six times, the 6th time it finally worked. Reinstallation will probably make no difference since i barely used it lately, i only made a couple of testrenderings and that's it. It's highly unlikely something has broken in that short time.
/ Magnus
Did you do as I suggested, to just open TG to its default state, save that, close it and reopen that file to test? I've been using TG for the past 6 hours with no problem.
Yes i also tried your suggestion, it was one of the first things i tried because i thought there were something wrong with my imported WM2 landscape that caused these crashes so that's why i started it up, saved a empty scene and unfortunately still got a crash.
Maybe it was only a temporary glitch, or my usual bad luck which caused all of these crashes. I don't know
/ Magnus
It's extremely odd for TG to be so unstable. What other applications do you use? Have you run a memory test (Memtest86+ for example)? Also try updating your graphics card driver (although this should not cause crash-on-save issues).
To be honest I'm a bit at a loss as to what would be causing it, but I assure you again that this level of instability is far from the norm.
- Oshyan
Although my reply is late, very late i know.. but even with the latest update released recently of Terragen 2 techdemo i'm still having the very same issues with it crashing upon save of a scenefile. It makes it pretty difficult to work with. I did a clean installation of the new version, also i tested my ram, i have no other similar problems with any other software i'm running. Could it be that i'm on XP64 SP2 that causes this.. ? i don't know
I'm running the techdemo Preview 5 build 1.9.99.1
A screenshot from what it looks like when the interface freezes as i try to save a TG2 scenefile
(http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/3/8/5/f_TG2CrashOnSm_4163c94.jpg) (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/3/8/5/f_TG2CrashOnSm_4163c94.jpg&srv=img28)
/ Magnus
Hi Magnus,
Do you still have any of the scene files that gave you an error when you tried to open them? Having a look at one of those might give us some ideas as to what's going wrong. You can either attach a file to your reply, or email it to me at jomeder@planetside.co.uk.
Regards,
Jo
Hi Jo and thanks for your reply
The problem is not with loading the scenefiles themselves, the problem is when i save them from Terragen 2. Then the program freezes and nothing happens until i terminate the application itself. Restarting it makes no difference either.
I unfortunately have no file to send you since i'm unable to save the scenefiles that causes these crashes/freezes.
/ Magnus
Hi Magnus,
I understand that you are having trouble saving, but in your previous message you said this :
"And each time i tried to save it also corrupted the scenefile so if i attempted to load it again it came in empty and with some sorta errormessage saying the file was corrupted."
If you have any of those files you mentioned then I would be very interested in seeing them. It may help to point out what's going wrong.
Regards,
Jo
Hi again Jo
That's true i said that before, and when rereading that line again and thinking about the current issues it's like this problem has gradually gone from bad to worse.
I uploaded a bunch of projectfiles here which you can test and see if you find any oddities in them.
http://rapidshare.com/files/135549255/tgdscenes.rar.html (http://rapidshare.com/files/135549255/tgdscenes.rar.html)
/ Magnus
Hi Magnus,
Thanks a lot for those files. I've had a bit of a look and the ones which have opening problems. They basically haven't finished being written, which suggests something about when the crash is happening, so that's useful information.
When you were saving these files which wouldn't open again, did TG2 crash while they were being saved? I'm asking because it would be interesting to know if TG2 was writing incomplete flies but didn't crash. I'm guessing that it did crash though.
Regards,
Jo
You're welcome Jo, i hope those files helps you track down this problem.
TG2 crashes or rather freezes and ends up in a infinite loop as it tries to save them but when it's unable to finish the operation i have to terminate the TG2 process myself and then end up with incomplete saved files which i then cannot reload again. Although sometimes it does crash upon save when i'm not killing the process or leaving it for a while to see what happens.
One thing i noticed about this as i did tests on my own is that TG2 crashes/freezes less when i'm not using a externally created heightfield file such as a landscape created with World Machine 2 and then saved as a Terragen file and imported into TG2. I'll try to explain it simpler below, in plain english. :)
- Using heightfield from WM2 and saving created landscape scenefile in TG2 causes crash/freeze.
- Using only TG2 generated landscapes with no WM2 landscapes in it causes almost no crashes
The problems seems to be whenever it uses any type of external files, it fails to "bake" them into the TG2 file and then the whole application goes down the drain. That's pretty much what i can see from where i'm sitting now.
/ Magnus
Can you send one of the *working* scene files, *before* the save-crash? Are there any "unusual" paths or file names in your project? Can you provide one of the terrain files that appears to cause a problem?
- Oshyan
Oshyan: Yes i will provide more files, including the Terragen files that World Machine 2 outputs so you can test them and see that they appear to cause trouble when included in the Terragen 2 scenes, if they're excluded TG2 rarely crashes. But if they're included in a TG2 scene you cannot save your TG2 scenes. I'm sorry my reply has been very delayed here but i had a systemcrash about a week ago and i lost a lot of stuff so i'm working to recover as much as possible and also reinstalling stuff again. Once i got my whole system up and running again then i will upload the files you want and i hope those will help you track down these problems.
/ Magnus
Sounds good, though I'm sorry to hear about your system crash. :( I hope we can get the save problem resolved once you can send the files.
- Oshyan