bbudzon

I think safe mode is harder to trigger on PC than on Mac. But, the way I would try to do it is by opening task manager and forcefully ending the task. Vision basically writes a flag out when it closes successfully called "CleanExit". If "CleanExit" is set, then we do not spawn into safe mode. If "CleanExit" is not set, then we assume that Vision crashed and ask the user if they would like to spawn into safe mode as a result. If you cannot get the DMX Recorder back into a location where you can see it on the monitor, we might be able to work together on nuking some registry key entries to get safe mode to spawn. Safe mode, when entered, clears out ALL user settings; including the last position of the DMX Recorder window. So, in theory, if we can get it to boot into safe mode, we can reset all windows positions back to their defaults.

You can download SP1 here: https://release.vectorworks.net/nnapub/all/2023/SP1/672714/NNA/eng/installer1/Vision2023-672714-installer1-osx.dmg https://release.vectorworks.net/nnapub/all/2023/SP1/672714/NNA/eng/installer1/Vision2023-672714-installer1-win.exe

We believe we found the issue in the code and are testing a fix now. If and when the fix is made public, I will post here.

I am able to reproduce this issue with both the 3DS and glTF backed MVRs. This leads me to believe the issue is not with the 3DS/glTF/MVR plugins, but rather an issue down in the core with the UVs the tessellator is giving us. One workaround would be to export your wall as an OBJ and merge that OBJ into Vision. The reason this works is because the OBJ exporter uses a different mechanism for exporting UVs and geometry (one that unfortunately does not work with MVR as it can only export the entire scene and not individual objects). I'll bring this issue with 3DS and glTF to the attention of the core team.

It looks like VSN worked in 2023 SP1 but broke in 2023 SP2. I'm working on narrowing down the code change that caused the issue. You can continue using V3S or fallback to SP1 to work around this issue until we get it fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I did just see a similar thing. V3S works. VSN does not. This is probably a good sign that points to the bug being a little easier to fix, as this implies that Vision does still have the textures after loading the MVR. If the V3S failed, it might imply that we somehow failed to "record" the textures in RAM and thus failed to write them to disk. I'll have to pick up further investigations tomorrow.

I like the way you're thinking! 😅 I'll make sure to run some more basic tests myself as well and also loop QA into this issue for additional testing. It's kind of good, in a weird way, that multiple people are experiencing this issue. Just means we are probably more likely to reproduce it in house. And, it's always easiest to fix a bug when you can step through the code line by line and watch it happen.

It might also be worth asking if you guys are only running into this issue with "complex" files; meaning ones with many many textures. Do you find that importing MVR and saving a VSN works in the simpler cases where, say, they are only a dozen textures?

I have some MVRs that were private messaged to me for testing. I'm going to try to reproduce the issue and debug it in the code. If I have trouble reproducing with their MVRs, I might ask for yours. Either way, I'll make sure to post updates here. One possible workaround for you guys, @DBLDand @TVTechTyler, would be to save the file as a V3S instead of a VSN. This can be done by exporting to the "legacy" file format from the file menu. Actually... this would be a really interesting test for you guys to perform. If it does not break when exporting to V3S but it does break when saving as a VSN, it might narrow things down in the code for me quite a bit.

One thing that is particularly odd, in my mind, is the default content from Vision such as the drummer. These textures should always exist on disk in the installation folder and if VIsion ever fails to find a texture inside of the VSN, it should reach out to disk and search the install folder for the appropriate drummer texture (which should, in theory, never fail as it should always be present). Furthermore, the default content such as the drummer doesn't really use any super advanced texturing or anything. So, I don't believe it should matter if the Texture Quality is set to Very Low, Low, Medium, High, or Very High. The drummer texturing should render regardless of that level. Could you post your VSN file or send it via DM for us to take a look? Thanks!

Yea, the render still and render movie functions do not handle bloom in this scenario. It is a technical limitation that we would like to address for sure! Frankly, it is just surprising from a user standpoint when it works sometimes but doesn't work other times.

It is odd that your pan and tilt would be working over DMX but the dimmer would not. I would try your best to make sure you are using the proper fixture personalities/modes in both Vision and the light console as this is the most likely cause. If you continue running into issues, you can contact VW Technical Support or might be able to post your VSN here. If we can reproduce the issue in-house, we should be able to fix the code or content.

Yup, @ASalien got it! You may need to ensure your document preference dialog is in "advanced" mode to uncheck the box. But, I believe you had to already be in advanced mode to check it in the first place 😄 Hope these posts have helped you!

Vision, unfortunately, does not support transparency. It only supports alpha masking right now. If you look at our 2021 demo file, you will see an example / work around to this issue. We basically made an alpha mask that put a bunch of tiny holes in the mesh. This allowed you to see through it somewhat and also allowed light to shine through. Do note that higher levels of Texture Quality are required for Alpha Textures to take effect. Transparency is something we would like to add to Vision, but it is difficult to handle this with our deferred rendering technology. Transparency can also get quite complicated with many many lights; making it look right and not bad/fake can be tough. And of course, we always want to ensure new features we add don't negatively impact performance. I hope you find something that works for you! If you don't need real time rendering and are just trying to get a still image look together, you may consider using VW Renderworks as well as transparency is supported in that software.

Agreed! And I'm sure you've likely seen this already. But, here is a great article I worked on with our Tech Pubs team regarding texturing in VW for Vision 2021+. We leveraged these techniques in our 2021 Demo File. So, that VWX and VSN is a good example of this article in practice. In reality, these practices are good to follow anytime you are exporting a 3DS/glTF/MVR to any other program. A lot of the testing I did involved Blender as an unbiased third party source. It's definitely a good read, but it's a little dense and may take a few passes to fully parse and grasp the concepts. Some things appear subtle or minor, but all of it is incredibly important. Feel free to ask questions in that thread if any come up!