What does this message mean?

[tuts3d]

This message shows up while on the " building light cache"...

Bitmap "(null)" returned an invalid color. (rgb ....).


after the rgb there are a bunch of numbers afterwards. When it comes to this point Vray seems to come to a standstill and it's been for hours already and nothing is happening. Should I terminate the render already and how do I find the culprit?

Thanks in advance.


PS I'm using sketchup 6 with vray 1.5.

[LuisDoBenfica]

Re: What does this message mean?

Hi,

Sorry, I don't know but.....did you try to render your scene with the lates SU+VRay ?

You can delete all the textures, and activate one by one + render to find which texture is causing problem.

Regards,
Luis

[patplace_cg]

Re: What does this message mean?

I've got the same message while i was rendering. lucky they just show but keep going render to the final. no idea what's going on.

But i won't do " delete all textures and re-do one by one to test" because there are 526 materials in my model. If i do that, i may need 5 weeks to find out which material is the bug. ???

And.. i am using su7 + vrsu 1.5

[LuisDoBenfica]

Re: What does this message mean?

I've got the same message while i was rendering. lucky they just show but keep going render to the final. no idea what's going on.

But i won't do " delete all textures and re-do one by one to test" because there are 526 materials in my model. If i do that, i may need 5 weeks to find out which material is the bug. ???

And.. i am using su7 + vrsu 1.5

5 weeks ;D

[Jackson_cg]

Re: What does this message mean?

Patplace,

What on earth are you modelling that you need 526 separate materials? ???

[JHuman]

Re: What does this message mean?

Its a problem when we download from 3D Warehouse. I usually take the downloaded model into a clean file, and purge, rename and combine materials. A lot of people on there do not know how to properly model, so you will get 10 materials of the same color of gray. I have had models from other users in our office with well over 800 materials, it drives me nuts!!!! And they always go corrupt. Ok, Im done venting, but I go back and remap the important materials and rename most everything to corrispond.

[thomthom]

Re: What does this message mean?

Yup. FormFonts models tend to be cleaner and easier to streamline. Though I have been toying with the idea of writing a script that combines identical materials into a single material.

[JHuman]

Re: What does this message mean?

That would be a lifesaver! or timesaver, something like that, let me know when you have it.

[patplace_cg]

Re: What does this message mean?

HI JACKSON,

yap. the project is the model of the whole new suburb. it's a very complex shopping center and apartment. As I starting do that model back to few version of vfsu. every time when i import the component. vrsu did duplicate the material automatically and i didn't notic that. back to that prior. there is no one mention the problem of import component to cos' material increasing in the forum. That's why i end up have 526 materials .

NOW i know there is a issue and i know now i have to get rip of the old material once import. unfortunately, every time i purge the unused material. the su crash. I believe it's too much materials. So i can't use that method to reselect the material and unpurge the old material. I i do one by one. that will take for ages.

Thom Thom. if you can write a script that fix the import component problem that you will save the world.

Cheers

[Jackson_cg]

Re: What does this message mean?

It takes quite a while, but every so often I commit a spare evening to sit down and update my component and material libraries- choose which components you'll regularly use, clean them and retexture them so they use a very limited pallette. The time and effort this saves when I'm actually working is paid back ten-fold.

The render below (no post-processing) for example has only 25 materials. If I added a few cars it'd only add about another 10 or 15. If I had to model the apartment interiors it'd probably add 20 to 30. If the background buildings had to be textured (usually that's the last thing clients want) I'd add maybe 20 or 30 materials. Importantly the majority of those materials don't require any VfSU setup as they have no reflection, no bump and no clipmapping. It's the ones that do require VfSU setup that I need to concentrate on finding ways to make the process as efficient as possible.

There's a couple of tricks which save a lot of time: all my textures of people are actually just one bitmap (and clipmap) with about twenty people on it, with each one cut out as a rectangle in SU and made into a face-me component. That way I can copy and paste 20 individuals into a skp file simultaneously, but only have to assign a clipmap once. Likewise I usually put two versions of the same tree variety on one bitmap so you can make a row of them with enough variation that they don't look like a row of clones.

The main thing is to plan ahead... months ahead. Think which SU components and VfSU textures take the most time to set up and spend your time cleaning them and exporting them whenever you have a spare moment. Cars are a perfect example, you usually only need a few different models to flesh out a scene and they'll be good for 3 or 4 years of rendering, but they require very good VfSU material setup on all of their materials. Retexture them in SU so they share a common material palette, but give each one a different bodywork paint material e.g. "A5 Bodywork", "Polo Bodywork", "C-Class Bodywork", etc. Then using just one car model set up the VfSU materials (including the bodywork paint) so they're just as you want and export them to a vismat folder under identical names as the SU materials e.g. "Car Tyres", "Car Chrome", "Car Glass", etc. Then when you add all your cars in the future it only takes a few seconds to import a few materials (the bodywork paint colour for each car will reset to the imported vismat, but it takes 2 seconds to change it to any colour you want) and every car will render perfectly first time.

Patplace- if your huge model is crashing SU's purge function why not split it into 10 or 20 separate skp files by isolating parts of it on layers, manually deleting everything else and then purging just what is on that layer and putting them back together? It sounds like an hour or two's work could save you weeks.

[JHuman]

Re: What does this message mean?

Good tips Jackson. Patplace, I have had this problem with Sketchup 7 crashing. So what I have started doing when I need to purge large models is to back save them to Sketchup version 6 then open it up in version 6 and purge. It goes much faster and hasnt crashed on me yet. I also do this when running the remove CG script plugin. I will run it on SU 7 and it will take a day or two to complete. In version 6 it will be done in an hour or so (or less), big time savings!

[patplace_cg]

Re: What does this message mean?

Joe, you are right. i try to save as su6 then unpurge everything. all done in 2 mins. unbelievable tricks. That's mean some bugs in SU7 or vfsu. ummm idea who should we go to report this buggy.

Looks like better way to do modelling in su7 then material and render in su6

[dalomar_cg]

Re: What does this message mean?

That's mean some bugs in SU7 or vfsu. ummm idea who should we go to report this buggy.

Knock on Google's door. VfSU7 is the same as VfSU6...all we changed was the installer.

[Jackson_cg]

Re: What does this message mean?

Joe, you are right. i try to save as su6 then unpurge everything. all done in 2 mins. unbelievable tricks. That's mean some bugs in SU7 or vfsu. ummm idea who should we go to report this buggy.

Looks like better way to do modelling in su7 then material and render in su6

Do you have VfSU installed in both SU6 and SU7? If not then the reason you're able to purge a huge file in SU6 is probably due to VfSU operating within the notoriously slow Ruby API. Purging heavy skp files alone (i.e. without VfSU installed) is known to bring systems to a complete halt for minutes or in extreme cases hours, but when it's an SU+VfSU file every material related action in SU has to be mirrored in VfSU's material editor. So while SU is hogging 100% of your system's resources, VfSU needs some too and is having to do so via a fairly inefficient API.

[thomthom]

Re: What does this message mean?

That's mean some bugs in SU7 or vfsu. ummm idea who should we go to report this buggy.

Knock on Google's door. VfSU7 is the same as VfSU6...all we changed was the installer.

"Knock knock knocking on Google's door"... reckon it could be a hit?