Bug: Cosmos assetts not downloading automatically in a shared file

[seltzdesign]

My colleague has built a scene in Rhino with a bunch of Cosmos Assets. If I open the file I can see the meshes of the cosmos assets, but when I render the scene the assets are not there. Even a .vrscene file containing the assets renders as empty.

If I download one of the assets it then starts showing up in the renders.

Surely, the system can't be that I have to manually download all the assets that are used in someone else's scene if I don't even know which ones they are. If it needs to download the assets it should ask to download them.

What's weird is that also all the textures are linked to a local folder with absolute paths, meaning as soon as you share the file and try to open it on another computer it simply doesn't render anything. This is true for Cosmos assets in Rhino files no matter if they are merged or not!?



It also seems that Grasshopper doesn't like a .vrscene with Cosmos assets in it and refuses to load it:




We thought the whole idea of Cosmos was to make it easier to build but also share scenes with objects in them. That I as the recipient also need to have V-Ray and Cosmos to render it is totally fine.

I am also very sure that this wasn't an issue when we first started with Cosmos, so I sincerely hope this is only a temporary bug.

Otherwise can someone tell us the expected way of sharing a Rhino file with Cosmos Assets with someone else?

Thanks!

[seltzdesign]

Could it be related to the latest update 1.2? I remember we shared files with Cosmos Assets in them and never had issues. I have already updated to the latest version on my machine and getting all these errors!?

[seltzdesign]

Investigating further it seems like .vrscenes are not compatible between V-Ray for Rhino 5.10.03 and 5.10.02

If I create a scene in 5.10.03 and then try to import it on the other machine with 5.10.02 it says:



Is this known? I didn't think there would be compatibility issues between minor updates!?

The other way round it loads the .vrscene, but none of the Cosmos Assets show.

[Peter.Chaushev]

Hello, seltzdesign ,
The automatic file path resolver for Cosmos assets works only for paths directly referenced in the project that is being rendered. Auto-resolving Proxy file paths referenced in another Proxy is currently not supported.
In your case, the Proxy Scene references Proxy Meshes (the Cosmos asset's geometry files are .vrmesh).

The only solution I can offer for your problem is to open the .vrscene file using a text editor, such as Notepad++, and then find&replace all instances of the invalid username in affected file paths with that of your machine's user (the rest of the path, pointing to Documents\Chaos Cosmos remains correct).

On a side note, our dev team is working on implementing direct loading for Cosmos assets via a GH component.

Kind regards,
Peter

[seltzdesign]

Hello, seltzdesign ,
The automatic file path resolver for Cosmos assets works only for paths directly referenced in the project that is being rendered.

Okay, so a Rhino file with Cosmos assets in it I should be able to open on another machine? But what about if the asset is not downloaded? And how do I know which assets to download? Shouldn't Cosmos at least show me which assets I need to download and then I can download them?

Hello, seltzdesign ,
Auto-resolving Proxy file paths referenced in another Proxy is currently not supported.

So that means .vrscene files are not interchangeable if they contain Cosmos assets? Even when you merge the assets you can't load them since all the texture paths are wrong.

Basically we need to wait for something like Nvidia Omniverse to be able to work on files together?

It's a real shame since I thought it was the whole point of Cosmos to avoid those typical issues, but it seems they are still exactly the same as using other assets. Except we have those on a shared network server, so you don't have those issues. So in some regards its a step back, unless we could set a network location as the download location for assets. Might play around with symlinks to give it a go, since the network drives have the same paths on all machines and are not located in the user folder which is usually different.

[kalina.maneva]

Hi seltzdesign,
We will release support for network drive storage in Cosmos in the following weeks. This feature will come as an update of the Cosmos Browser.
We will also announce it here in the forums.

Regards,

[Peter.Chaushev]

Thank you for the excellent questions!

Okay, so a Rhino file with Cosmos assets in it I should be able to open on another machine? But what about if the asset is not downloaded? And how do I know which assets to download? Shouldn't Cosmos at least show me which assets I need to download and then I can download them?

There are three scenarios when you receive a project file that references Cosmos assets:
1. The assets files are automatically found in your local Cosmos library (default location: %UserProfile%\Documents\Chaos Cosmos)
2. The assets files are missing from your local Cosmos library but are found at the location of your scene file. The V-Ray > Pack Project menu action supports packing all files referenced by Cosmos assets. When unpacked on another system, V-Ray looks for all files in the directory where the project file is located.
3. The assets files are missing entirely from your machine. In this case they can be downloaded from the server. A download button appears in the V-Ray Asset Editor for each Cosmos asset that is missing its files.
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...rowser-Updates

Note that the Asset Editor's options panel of each Cosmos asset displays a status icon next to its name to inform how its files are resolved (from library files, from external files or not resolved). Hover over the icon for further info.

So that means .vrscene files are not interchangeable if they contain Cosmos assets? Even when you merge the assets you can't load them since all the texture paths are wrong.

A Proxy Scene that contains a .vrscene file which references other proxy files within can still have the nested file paths resolved at render time. The required files simply need to reside in the same directory as the project file you render.
Another requirement is to use the "Strip paths" option when you first export the .vrscene file that references other proxies (https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...ingaV-RayScene). Then, simply place that .vrscene file together with the other files it references in the same location as your .3dm project.

I know all of this may sound confusing to some extend. We are fully aware the process of transferring proxy assets is not the most intuitive.
There are some ideas our dev teams hope to pursue to improve project files maintenance. If there is anything else you find unclear, please let me know!

Kind regards,
Peter