Two weeks ago I returned to TG 3.2. because while I was busy with every TG licence I own, I had no time to check some things:
Strange things happening with 3.3:
1.
Very often (75% of all cases) when I tried to start an animation, I got the error "can't load GI cache file"
But the Files were there and readable.
After restarting the software sometimes it worked - sometimes I needed 2-4 restarts.
2.
In 3.2 I knew the problem that some populations could not be edited but in 3.3 I could not edit ANY population.
I tried small populations, different obj, tgo... nothing worked. Back on 3.2 now it works again.
3.
The amount of software crashes unfortunately increased to double times as before.
Some info beside:
I tried on 5 different PCs. Some with AMD graphics, some with NVidia graphics
3 times Windows 7 64 bit, 1 Win 8.1 64 bit, 1 Win 10 64 bit
4 Intel procs, 1 AMD poc
2 time I uninstalled the old 3.2 before, 3 times I updated
I tried with my running projects as well as with new files.
At all PCs and in all cases I found the same behavior.
Is there something else I should note especially?
I have had the can't load GI Cache File issue. I moved the project over to a SSD and the issue seems to have cleared its self up.
I actually ran into an unexpected GI cache not found issue recently myself, so I will definitely look into it further now that I have heard your report as well.
As far as the population editing issues that's quite strange as I believe population editing was theoretically *improved* in 3.3 (i.e. it should be better than in 3.2).
The crashes are also a mystery. I'm not seeing them here but I do see a couple of other possibly related reports on the forums in the last month or so. I would have assumed it might be some graphics card commonality but it seems like you're saying you tested on machines with different graphics cards (even different chip makers) and they are all unstable, is that true? In that case we have to look and see if we made any changes to anything that uses OpenGL perhaps, which may be affecting all cards, or maybe it's not related to OGL at all.
Have you found any way to reliably reproduce these crashes?
- Oshyan
Quote from: DocCharly65 on September 09, 2015, 10:35:13 AM
1.
Very often (75% of all cases) when I tried to start an animation, I got the error "can't load GI cache file"
But the Files were there and readable.
After restarting the software sometimes it worked - sometimes I needed 2-4 restarts.
I recently noticed this when using File -> Open Recent, with a project that is on a different drive letter from C:, in my case the W: drive. If I use File -> Open, it works correctly. It might have something to do with relative file paths not being properly set up on different drives.
Matt
Quote from: Oshyan on September 09, 2015, 04:19:49 PM
Have you found any way to reliably reproduce these crashes?
- Oshyan
As long I used 3.3 I could reproduce on all PCs but since I got back to 3.2 of course I can't. Sorry.
Quote from: Matt on September 09, 2015, 06:44:19 PM
I recently noticed this when using File -> Open Recent, with a project that is on a different drive letter from C:, in my case the W: drive. If I use File -> Open, it works correctly. It might have something to do with relative file paths not being properly set up on different drives.
Matt
I use several starting types: Open recent, doubleclick on tgd-file, open TG and open tgd-file. But you may be right, that the GI-file-not-found-error occured more often in the "Open recent"-case. When the error occures, I usually want to restart as fast as possible and then of course use "Open recent".
But the most disturbing error was not to be able to edit populations. That occured on all PCs in any condition even with fresh empty files and a new population of less than 100 instances.
The general crashes ("Terragen has stopped to work... windows will tell you...) occured mostly when I deleted objects, populations or when I changed vallues of shaders inside of objects.
Fortunately 3.2 has all features I need so I can stay there for a while, but thus unfortunately I am no great help to isolate the errors.
Im having the problem with "Unable to read GI Cache" error as well. Ive restarted terragen several times and it will not read the giCache. This is a bit of a showstopper, is it possible to still download the previous version of terragen?
After some fiddling, I got it to work reliably but it appears to be an awkward workaround.
For whatever reason, if I leave the giCache folder as a child folder of my project folder, then the read error occurs no matter where I put them. Ive tried expliciting defining the path and that didnt work either. I noticed that ever time I tried to leave in the explicit path, terragen truncated it to just the child folder name and then the error occurs.
If I move the giCache outside of my project folder and then explicitly define the path, it appears to work. So it would appear that the solution (for me anyways) is to move the giCache files out of my project folders. But this is clunky from a data management pov..
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the extra detail Jason, that's very helpful! We'll look into the issue on our end and we'll issue an update ASAP if we do find an error and can resolve it quickly.
- Oshyan
We've identified some issues around path detection for files, particularly GI cache files. We're working on a fix and will issue a public update once we can be sure the fixes haven't introduced other issues. In the meantime your workaround is probably the best bet for anyone experiencing this.
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan!
Thanks JasonA71, Matt and Oshyan for caring about this.
Sorry... I remember one thing now. I forgot it because I use it seldom. But I should mention it: Can everybody use the mesurement mode? This did'nt work on two different PCs either.
The Measurement Tool is working here. What happens when you try to use it? Does the measurement window show up?
- Oshyan
I try to answer it from my memory because I changed back to 3.2
The little window opened - that for sure.
When I started a measurement by choosing the start point, the yellow path appeared immediately in a weird direction and I couldnd use measuring any more.
Tomorrow I get one of my render PCs free to do some tests...
Perhaps I did something strange while installing to have these bugs. But 5 times?
I'll probably bite myself in the butt when everything suddenly runs smoothly :D
Sounds very strange, almost like a graphics card issue... but as you say, you tried it on multiple PCs. Very odd as I can't reproduce it (or the general instability, or many other errors) here...
But the GI caching issue we can reproduce. So we're working on it. :D
If you can find some more specific details about the population editing problems that would be helpful. If indeed the measure tool is not "displaying" correctly, then that might help explain your problems with population editing too...
- Oshyan
I am getting the "unable to read GI cache error" now after the latest update. I am able to circumvent the issue if I place the cache files outside of my project folder, i.e. no relative path is used.
This bug is a show stopper for me. I do all my rendering on farms which requires I use relative path names. My renders large and animated so they need to have GI caches provided along with the files for render.
If at all possible can we get an eta for when this bug will be fixed? I seem to be totally out of luck until its resolved. :(
This thought occurred to me this weekend as I was going to try out Pixel Plow, but they require the all of the project files to be children of the terragen project file, which is when this bug presents itself.
Im going to send an email to the Pixel Plow folks to see if they can assist in getting jobs done with this pathing problem, we'll see what they say...
Pixel Plow isnt able to sort this out, so it appears that their service is unavailable until this bug is fixed and a new update released..
We're sending Pixel Plow an updated build today which should resolve the problem. We'll make it publicly available for all users very soon.
- Oshyan
I was able to submit jobs to pixel plow today with with a relative reference to GI caches. Thanks so much for the prompt support! I'll keep my eye out for an update to allow me to render on my local machine with a relative reference to GI caches.
Quote from: mrjrdnthms on September 22, 2015, 05:01:14 PM
I was able to submit jobs to pixel plow today with with a relative reference to GI caches. Thanks so much for the prompt support! I'll keep my eye out for an update to allow me to render on my local machine with a relative reference to GI caches.
If you're on Windows with Terragen 3 Professional or Terragen 3 Creative, try the "check for updates" feature now. The update should be active. (The Free Edition doesn't use GI cache files.)
Matt
Great news, Thanks Matt!!
Any update on when this issue might be fixed for the mac version?
We hope to have the Mac update ready by early next week. Thanks for your patience!
- Oshyan
That's great. Thanks for your help.
I've uploaded the new Mac and Linux builds from Jo today. On all platforms, the latest version of Terragen 3 Professional and Terragen 3 Creative is 3.3.04.0.
Matt
Congratulation and thanks Matt, two of the problems seem to be solved on my first test-system:
Length and distance measurement works now
GI Cache file reading no crash after 2 tries
I will test editing big populations on another system... this one will explode if I just try (Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 2 GHz, 4GB DDR2-SDRAM - the Viper in the desert render from last night with 20 minutes will need about 2 hrs here) ;D