[bjorn.syse]

Hi, sometimes, I have problems with the rendered viewport not showing my textures. I haven't found a way to resolve this, and I'm not sure what makes it happen. Have any of you experienced this?



(the footstand has a rather large cloth texture in the render)

regards

- Björn

[JDHill]

Hmm...

- can I assume that material actually has a texture selected? What about when you select an empty texture, then select the cloth one again?
- when you make Maxwell the current renderer (or, set it to Rhino Render, then back to Maxwell), is there a message printed in the Rhino command line that says 'Real-time viewport materials are disabled.'? (if so, toggle on the 'Enable real-time viewport materials' button in the database manager's top toolbar)
- what happens if you run the Refresh Viewport Materials command (in the Functions toolbar)?

[bjorn.syse]

Hi JD,

Yes, I've tried all the things you mention. Seems nothing happens. However, when switchin between two texture slots in the material editor, the object that has the material does change color slightly (As if something happens) but can't see the texture..

btw. If I take the texture slot for say Reflectance 0 and change it to another image file this shows up in the viewport. I've tried taking the original texture and made sure it's an RGB 8 bit file and tried saving it as a PNG aswell, with no luck.

(I've emailed you the files)

regards,

- Björn

[jvanmetre]

If it's a material with a texture...it doesn't show in the viewport (at least for me) unless I've selected the material channel (reflection, bump, etc.) that actually has the texture map.

*** the last material channel selected becomes the basis for what is seen in the viewport ***


jvm

[bjorn.syse]

yep jvanmetre, that's the same for me, but in this case it does not matter..

[bjorn.syse]

Addition: I'm running Rhino on Win XP on a Macbook Pro. Sometimes through virtualisation software (parallels) and sometimes trough bootcamp. This problem with the texture occured when running XP through parallels but was resolved when I rebooted XP through bootcamp.

What I've also noticed is the extremely slow color picker - which is only a problem if running trough bootcamp (on the other hand). The color picker is quick when running XP in parallels.

This all sounds like some sort of graphic card issue between Parallels and Bootcamp XP (Driver issue?)

[JDHill]

Hi Björn,

It does sound like this may be a problem with Parallels, but I would not be able to confirm this or not. If the behavior is different on Bootcamp, I would tend to look at Parallels - the plugin does not know what kind of environment you're running it in. Also, I got your email, but am not able to extract the .zip archive; it appears to be corrupted. Regarding the color picker, version 1.7.31 adds the plugin option: Use Custom Color Picker; let me know if setting this to No helps. Apparently, .NET is using DirectX underneath for some aspect of the color picker, and this appears to be the cause of the slowness seen on some machines.

JD

[bjorn.syse]

Ah, ok. Don't worry about the zip then, it's probably a parallels issue and temporary. But the color picker thing is different - this is only an issue when running through bootcamp but not at all when through parallels.

Yep, the custom color picker thing helps, but that other color picker is so ugly so I'd rather wait the 8 seconds..

but what is this issue about again? it wasn't there in the earlier versions, right?

- Björn

[JDHill]

Well, really that's the issue - I don't know what causes it, because it apparently happens due to code that is running well below my own, i.e. however the .NET Framework decides to translate the code in the color picker into actual Windows objects is different on different machines/cards. So the only recourse I have outside of completely rebuilding the color picker (on the blind hope that it would work differently somehow) is offering the optional use of the standard Windows color picker, which is just provided to me by the system as a kind of one-line solution. In the next version, I will likely add the option of using the Rhino color picker as well, since I've also had a request to do that - I like my color picker and the Windows one though, since they both have the possibility of saving user-preset colors though.

[bjorn.syse]

Ah, ok. Let's hope for the best during any updates in the future then.. Yes, I love your color picker, it's great!