[bjorn.syse]

Hi,

I'm having extremely annoying issues with a not too complicated file (allthough a CAD model of a boat pentry). I've assigned a few material (3) to different surfaces and the materials have textures which are around 8-10 MB large each. Alltogether the geometry takes up ~30 MB of space.

My problems are:

1. When opening the file, it either takes forever (10 minutes). I can see Rhino using up to 1 500 MB of memory, or sometimes it runs out of memory alltogether.

2. If I get this file to open (sometimes it does only take around a minute). When importing something else in there, even if as simple as a cube, this take-forever-procedure is started all over again.

I've found that:

3. If I export this model with the "Geometry only" flag set, the file opens in a flash.

I'm on:

32 Bit Windows Vista with all the latest versions of Rhino and Maxwell. There are no block definitions or Bad objects in this file.

What's going on here? I can not work at all.

Thankful for any input!

Regards,

- Björn

[JDHill]

How big is the file when you save small? Does it possibly seem related to issues with a specific texture vs. your video card/drivers etc? I don't know of any particular reason for the issue, so if it's possible to send the file, maybe I can duplicate it here.

[bjorn.syse]

Hi JD

The file is only 28 MB when saved small. I think it might have to do something with the textures. This issue occured first on a file I textured on my computer and then moved to this Vista machine. All I can think of that could possible still refer to some path the vista machine can't find would be the textures, right?

Allthough, when everything is opened it seems fine, no textures has bad paths or anything. The textures used are all PNG-files 2048x2048px, around 8-10 MB each.

I wish I could send you the file but it's classified through work.

Would/could a video driver issue cause this delay/lag/free/memory leak when opening a file?

[bjorn.syse]

btw, this occurs on another machine with XP Pro aswell...

[JDHill]

My first instinct is to look at the textures - I imagine there could be an issue either when the plugin tries to read them, or when Rhino does; it really depends on alot of factors. What type of paths are they on? Does the system need to spin up an off-line hard drive to get to them? Does it have to hit the network? I'd be curious if you can see any difference using different textures, or textures at a different location.

Either way, the plugin has what I think is a much more comprehensive texture-searching system than Rhino does, and you may be able to isolate this by:

1. get the file into the 'bad' state, save
2. uninstall the plugin
3. try to open the file (don't save it)

The strategy here is to try to figure out where the bottleneck is. I couldn't say for sure what card/driver issues there may be, because it is unknown to me what facilities the system (i.e. the .NET Framework) might use on your machine to read textures.

[bjorn.syse]

Ok

The textures are placed locally on each machine. Can I choose relative or absolute paths anywhere?

I guess not using the textures at all does make a difference since the file exported "Geometry only" opens right away. I''ll try and save all the textures as JPEGs or something just for the sake of it.

I've tried the following with success. Would that have the same effect as uninstalling the plugin?

1. Open Rhino in Safe mode. It opens the 'bad' file in a flash. I get the question if I want to load Maxwell plugin or not. It does not matter what I choose here, it still opens the file right away.

[JDHill]

Yes, that should have a similar effect. The question is, when you do this, are the textures still showing up in the viewport; that is, without the plugin's help?

Also:

1. are you opening this by double-clicking the file? What happens if you open Rhino, then use File > Open?
2. what do your texture search-paths look like (in plugin options)?
3. what do you have the search depth set to?
4. do you have 'Check File Version' enabled?
5. is the MXM Browser visible when you open Rhino? What if you close it, close Rhino, then re-open the file.
6. if (5) makes a difference, how large is the directory that the MXM Browser initially points to? What if you choose a directory with less subdirectories?

All of these things may (drastically) affect the startup time, so let me know what you find.

[bjorn.syse]

The question is, when you do this, are the textures still showing up in the viewport; that is, without the plugin's help?

I seems shade is disabled in safe mode... But, I did try to unload the Maxwell plugin and Then open the file. Opens in a flash! However, the textures are not visible in rendered mode, no.

1. are you opening this by double-clicking the file? What happens if you open Rhino, then use File > Open?

I've tried them all, drag-n-drop, Open command, Double click the file. Same result.

2. what do your texture search-paths look like (in plugin options)?
3. what do you have the search depth set to?

It is set to C:/program files/next limit etc... and the limit is set to 3

4. do you have 'Check File Version' enabled?

Nope.

5. is the MXM Browser visible when you open Rhino? What if you close it, close Rhino, then re-open the file.

Nope, it's not open.

[JDHill]

I seems shade is disabled in safe mode... But, I did try to unload the Maxwell plugin and Then open the file. Opens in a flash! However, the textures are not visible in rendered mode, no.

Okay, that seems to be a key. You need to figure out why Rhino can't find these textures, because what you are doing when the plugin is loaded is relying on it to do some possibly crazy texture-searching in order for it to fix up your viewport.

Curious, if you 'disable real-time materials' (top toolbar in the db manager), does that affect the behavior? Also, try the same thing with the Material Editor as I said to do with the MXM Browser - close it, close Rhino, then re-open. What is the effect?

[bjorn.syse]

Btw, get this. I put the load protection on the Maxwell plugin.

I double-clicked the bad file to open it together with a new instance of Rhino. It ask me to load the Maxwell plugin, I press 'yes' - and the file opens in a flash.

So Maxwell plugin is loaded but there is no Maxwell menu yet since Maxwell is not set as the current renderer. all the textures are visible in Rendered mode. However, as soon as I choose Maxwell as the current renderer, I get the "Not responding" + hourglass for a few minutes..

I'll try the "real-time materials switch". But I never keep any Maxwell panes open (material editor/mxm browser).

[bjorn.syse]

Disabling Real time materials does the trick! What's going on here, what is that switch?

[JDHill]

Cool, at least that points to a particular place I can look in the code - back in awhile...

[bjorn.syse]

Sweet, good luck. Thanks for talking me through this

[JDHill]

Well, very little actually happens when you make Maxwell the current renderer:

1. it restores the state of any windows you might have had open
2. it enables the heads-up display, if it was enabled before
3. it runs the 'restore viewport' command, if real-time materials are enabled, and if the 'Restore Viewport on Load' option is enabled

So, with real-time materials disabled, you should be able to make it hang up just the same by using the 'restore viewport' command - this should be the same if you click the button in the db manager toolbar, or if you use the command in the plugin's Functions toolbar.

If it is slow when you do this, I would suggest temporarily changing the materials involved to use some other textures, possibly smaller, but which (most importantly) have been created using some software other than whatever you used to create the ones currently being used. This all seems to be pointing to Rhino having some sort of problem with these particular texture files.

[bjorn.syse]

Ok, It really does seem to have to do with the textures. Restore viewport hangs it up, but if I disable the textures in those materials Restore viewport doesn't take a second.

Would you mind trying the textures? Making a JPEG of it didn't do the trick. I'll try something else.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/114792/textures.zip