[LesliePere]

Hi,

I've just recently installed 1.7. Found this strange shading issue. Not with rendering, but UI/window/viewport updates. I'm just thinking it might not be Rhino, cuz I didn't have this issue before the 1.7 installation. So here's the scoop.

1. Start Rhino. If you already have Rhino open, close it first, then start it again.
2. Put some objects into the scene. Just basic primitives will do, like sphere, cone, whatever.
3. Press the "Shade" button on the toolbar and select a shading mode. Here's a snapshot of the button:


4. Now, if you just started Rhino fresh, it should be fine. Get out of shading mode. Now press the Shade button again. The active viewport start flashing, just once, every time you press the Shade button, but it doesn't actually go into shading mode UNTIL you move your cursor into another viewport, or until you hover over other buttons and let the tooltip come up. In this particular scenario, my toolbar is at the top, and when I roll over a button, the tooltip will partially cover the view that is trying to go into shaded view. At that point, because of the tooltip came up, the viewport will receive - I guess I can call it "correct" - update event of some sort, and this will put the view into shaded mode finally.

Another way to try this, is to roll the cursor over to another viewport. This will also generate an update event which will correctly place the view into shaded mode. However, as long as you just press the "Shade" button and don't move the mouse over to another viewport, or force a tooltip to cover the view, it will NOT put the view into shaded view - which it should.

I noticed that in 1.7 there are other issues with incorrect updates with palette windows. For example...

1. In the Scene Manager > Options tab > Display Options section, enable "Dockable Database Manager" (=yes).
2. Go to the Database Manager, make sure you have some material icons there.
3. Click the "Volume View" icon in the DB Manager.
4. Right click, and select, say, "Large Icons" from the popup menu.
5. Now right click again, and select "List". The area where the popup menu was, will not update. You have to resize the window or force an update event.

This will not happen if the palette window(s) are not in dockable mode (dockable = no).

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WinXP Pro SP2 / AMD 4800 x2 / 4G
Rhino 4 SP3
Maxwell 1.7

Video:
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTO / 256M
OpenGL v2.1.2
32bit mode 1600x1200

NVIDIA Forceware v169.21
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[JDHill]

Hi Leslie,

Your first issue sounds like something that would be highly dependent on your specific machine or video card. That is to say, I do not see the same effects here. It would not be logical for me to try to rule out the possibility that it could be related to the plugin for the simple fact that installing/running it does change your environment appreciably - windows (in Windows, 'window' means basically anything rectangular and interactive - buttons, toolbars, tool windows, main windows, etc.) all ineroperate with one another hundreds or thousands of times per second, and the 1.7 plugin is a substantially different application than the versions which preceded it. So, it is possible for you to see effects which are the result of running a plugin, but which are not deliberately caused by code inside of it.

So, there are a couple of things that come to mind:

1. it doesn't take very long to do, so try uninstalling the plugin, and see if your issue persists. If not, reinstall and see if it comes back. This wouldn't go far towards finding the reason why, but it would still be useful to know
2. have a look at the settings for your video card. As I noted above, glitches of this kind would usually be very machine/card-dependent

Regarding the repainting issue with the dockable database manager, that is part of the game at this point when we use the dockable windows in a .Net-based Rhino plugin. It is one of the big reasons why version 1.5 had no dockable windows at all, and also why 1.6/1.7 gives you the option of running things as dockable or not. It is not possible for me to do anything about the issue itself - the windows would repaint themselves if they thought it was necessary, but as it is, they are not being told to do so in some circumstances. I do prefer to use them as dockable, so when I have any repaint issue, all I do is put the mouse over the window's top bar, click down the left mouse button, and move the mouse a pixel or two...that will generate a message which the plugin's window will get, and it should repaint. Alternatively, just don't use them in dockable mode.

Please let me know if you can definitively pin the first issue on the plugin by performing the uninstall/test/reinstall/re-test procedure.

Thanks,

JD

[LesliePere]

JD, thanks for the reply.

Yup, I uninstalled the plugin and that fixed the flashing issue. Then I reinstalled the plugin and the flashing came back.

However, it also turned out, that if I have the plugin installed, but I switch the renderer to Rhino's built-in renderer, that fixes the flashing as well.

So it seems like the viewport shading only exhibit this problem when the renderer is set to the maxwell plug. Don't have to be uninstalled.

PS: I have .NET 2.0. Do you think installing 3.0 would have any improvements over this?

[JDHill]

Thanks for the precise reporting. The plugin does not use .Net 3.0, so installing that would be unnecessary. It is a long shot, but repairing or re-installing .Net 2.0 may have some effect. Aside from that, I'm trying to think of possible reasons for this, so here are a couple more questions:

- do you have the camera's heads-up display enabled? How does enabling/disabling this affect your viewport?
- what plugin version did you previously have installed? What happens if, with no other changes, you uninstall 1.7, and reinstall the previous version?
- does it make any difference if you have the Scene Manager open? How about if you switch it from dockable to standalone, or vice-versa? Is there any difference depending on which Scene Manager tab is shown, especially meaning the environment tab with the OpenGL globe?
- which other plugins do you have installed?

Hopefully the answers to some of these questions will narrow down the possibilities.

Thanks,

JD

[LesliePere]

- do you have the camera's heads-up display enabled? How does enabling/disabling this affect your viewport?

It does not have any effect whether it's enabled or not.

- what plugin version did you previously have installed? What happens if, with no other changes, you uninstall 1.7, and reinstall the previous version?

I had 1.5 installed previously. I completely uninstalled 1.5, restart, and installed 1.7. I am not sure if I want to re-install 1.5 (unless you insist), since I know it didn't have this problem because I usually use this "Shaded" fetaure a lot and this is the first time I seen it. Of course I didn't use 1.6 so I'm not sure if it was present in that version or not.

- does it make any difference if you have the Scene Manager open?

Nope.

How about if you switch it from dockable to standalone, or vice-versa?

Nope. Dockable or not does not have influence.

Is there any difference depending on which Scene Manager tab is shown, especially meaning the environment tab with the OpenGL globe?

Nope. It doesn't matter if I have panels open, or whether all of them are closed.

- which other plugins do you have installed?

I only have Maxwell.

[LesliePere]

UPDATE

Apparently, if I uncheck the "Use Region Buffers" option in Rhino Ooptions > Appearance > OpenGL, it solves this issue.

So something happened with the region buffers between 1.7 and 1.5.

[JDHill]

Hmm...I really don't know why that would make a difference - the plugin has no knowledge about that kind of thing. Thanks much for letting me know though.

JD