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ajpen

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Everything posted by ajpen

  1. I just found this thread, and it saved me two days of randomizing the rotation of literally thousands of objects. I discovered that both @Pat Stanford's Rotate Each Object and @MarcU's randomized version thereof don't seem to work as advertised within groups. For me it was not a problem, because in my context i could ungroup all of my objects and then re-group them after randomizing the rotation, but i thought i'd mention it if either Pat or Markus have the time to look in to that. Thanks guys, these scripts are great!!!! peace aj
  2. I have always used full screen cursor and have not had this happen before. I have re-drawn the model using full screen cursor and it's fine. I just can't figure out what keystroke mistake I might have made to make this happen. Loci are either "Always" "Never" or "Only in Wireframe" - those are the only options in Vectorworks Preferences > Display ???
  3. Hi there, Anyone seen this before? All of these lines that extend to the edges of the window are actually 3D loci. The "forest" of loci are from points embedded within truss sections. I don't know what I did here, but they all of a sudden stretched out like this. I added the few outside of the forest in the image below just to confirm they are 3D loci. ???
  4. Yeeee Haw!! Solved it. Look in Windows Defender Firewall... Allow An App... It's called "loader" (lowercase, just like that) but if you click on Details you will see that it is actually in the Vision folder, so I enabled this mystery "loader" and all of a sudden... it works! Of course we figure things out as soon as we have asked for help... But hopefully this will help someone else!! peace aj
  5. We are trying to connect Vision to MA-Net2 with a dongle. Works fine when all on same PC using 127.0.0.0 loopback and onPC - all parameters available. Using sACN, MA-Net2 is limited by parameter count. In our case we have as many MA2 Lights as we could ask for, which only grant 4096 parameters even when in the same network. Can't get our hands on an NPU and this is time sensitive, unfortunately. When using a real MA2 session with consoles, Vision does not respond to an MA2 session that is not the loopback. We can connect our onPC on the Vision computer to the network, but Vision itself won't respond to DMX from MA2-Net. Switch back to Loopback and it all works. Any ideas?
  6. @bbudzon By "Bucketing" do you mean the process of rendering one "rectangle" at a time then stitching together like a panorama photo? In the original version of ESP Vision, when you asked for a still render this process happened right on the screen so that it appeared that it was panning across the scene... This is what I was thinking (though I'd have no idea how to fix it)... that perhaps the first of these "snapshots" was missing some line of code that reappeared when the program cycled to the next one... and it only applied to non-light geometry since we could see the light beams from fixtures in that "frame" All of my tests were with viewport resolution of 1280x720 rendering to a still at 3840x2160. Interesting that changing that gave you different results.
  7. I can confirm that this does NOT happen in the previous version of Vision 621747 However, any MVR exported with the new gITF feature will not render that geometry in the old version (obviously), so all MVRs have to be exported with the legacy .3DS option to show up in that version of Vision.
  8. OK here it is with just a big block (extrusion converted to Generic Solid) where the SR PA should be. This black hole is affecting that top corner of the rendering in every instance: Realtime: Rendered Still: These images began as a blank VWX document and that big box SR is the simplest geometry, so there's no possibility of some weird "speaker array tool" problem or other thing due to records, etc. This is simple geometry that won't render. It gets more interesting when lighting devices are added behind that big block. I tried just copying a few PA stacks behind that block in the model, and they still don't render. However, lighting device output will render through the black hole. The geometry of the fixtures themselves, however, don't render. Again, this is realtime: And this is the render: I'm out of quarters on this one... The same MVR files would render properly before the SP3 update, so i'll have to see if i can find an old installer and get back to work. I have attached the VWX file from which I created this MVR and these renderings in case someone can break the code and figure this one out. Thanks peace aj Arena PA CornerRenderProblem.mvr Arena PA CornerRenderProblem.vwx
  9. Tried re-exporting the MVR in both "new" gITF format (the new default) and "legacy" .3DS format. Same results. Tried opening a new VWX document and copying all of the PA from my document and pasting in to a fresh layer in a blank document, then export MVR... This is what I saw upon copying: So perhaps my PA symbol, originally created with the Speaker Array tool, is compromised in some way. aj
  10. Discovered two things: 1) The SR PA (the one that disappears) was the original from which SL was mirror copied. 2) It happens with a new document with just the MVR of the PA: Realtime: Rendering: Attached .mvr for reference - see if it happens to you! Thanks aj Troubled-PA.mvr
  11. Here's a weird one that I just want to document before looking further or coming up with a workaround: The Stage Right PA disappears... or has a partial "cloaking device"! This is a screenshot in real time: And here's a rendered still generated from this exact scene: What's happening here? I suspect maybe the PA symbols were mirrored when inserted in to the VWX model, so I'll start there. But right now there's a black hole that swallows these objects on rendering. Notice that the bottom cabinets on the SR PA are visible, and it's not all black; the fixtures on the truss behind are quite visible. I suspect Romulan technology, stolen by the Klingons... but i'm not enough of a Trekkie to take that metaphor any further... Any thoughts? aj
  12. @klinzey Aha! Had not seen that option; MVR export is such a reflex for me now that I didn't notice that little box! Found it in the release notes, no less: VB-185453Export MVR with glTF breaks glTF textures I have confirmed that the legacy .3DS export works as it did before. I just had a crazy idea (but maybe a good one)... A "check engine" light for Vectorworks that draws attention to the features you use most often somehow. Opening the full release notes and searching for one's favourite features is a start... Thanks Kevin! aj
  13. The workaround for this is to first create transparency images for any image you plan to turn in to a texture, then assign the transparencies individually from within Vision. This is of course tedious, adding hours to any model build since you need to prepare the image in a different program twice (three or four times if you're adding Bump or Reflectivity).
  14. When exporting to MVR from Vectorworks, texture transparency and bump are no longer exported. The example is of 3d polygons with a texture that has an alpha channel. The texture is of audience member silhouettes and their transparency (image mask with alpha) allows their heads to be seen with the rest of the rectangular polygon transparent: In the Properties window, you can see that the above selected geometry has been brought in from the Renderworks texture properly: When exporting MVR from VWX2022 SP3, we can see that the name of the geometry has now been changed to "meshes[0]" and the transparency is no longer there. Note the black rectangular polygon outline where there should be transparent alpha channel: And now the Properties window indicates that the geometry has no Alpha texture: This happens when "Image Mask" Transparency is used in the Renderworks texture from "This Texture's Color" then selecting Alpha Channel It also happens when a separate transparency image is prepared in Photoshop by generating an image with white for the pixels you want rendered and black for transparent (essentially the same process that Renderworks is doing, but manually). Could this be repaired? Transparencies are an essential part of the Vision workflow, saving countless polygons when illustrating complicated objects with just a few polygons. Thanks aj
  15. Dude, you already got my money, and I have been using your awesome symbols for some time now!!! I think that I was using the VWX model because you didn't have that particular Ampeg symbol? Or maybe some other reason. Perhaps I need to throw you another $50 for the 2020 models?? I'll help you shamelessly plug your library... I just switched a bunch of VWX guitars for your symbols to reduce the polygon count for pre-vis... Keep up the good work! peace aj
  16. Luckily I have a console here and not a viz-key, because I can still output sACN on all my granted universes. I believe that when recording DMX, the MA3 connection is smoother and better than recording sACN. When I rendered out an animation with Absolute Camera moves using MA3 Connect, the camera was quite smooth. When this problem happened and I switched to sACN, the DMX recordings resulted in jerky camera movements. The model is now more complicated, so perhaps that has something to do with it. That Absolute camera is wonderful, but it is frustrating to see it work smoothly one day and jerky the next. However, I don't have time for these experiments any more. My solution has been to go back to MA2 for lighting programming and MA3D (2 version) for pre-vis. It just works better. I'm sorry, but I'm done debugging Vision for now. I'll be using other tools to get my programming done. I really appreciate your efforts and detailed responses, but when an upgrade breaks a working feature and it gets released, it's really frustrating. Some will say "don't upgrade while working on a project" but I HAD to upgrade to get the MVR texture import to work after identifying that problem. Covid time was great for learning new software and experimenting, but now that real work has returned, I find myself fighting the newest software more than using it. Very disappointed that all of this work has not resulted in a more usable product. Seems we are still playing catch-up with Vision and every time there's a problem fixed, new problems are created. I hope that the "higher ups" that seem to be holding this product back, promising features that don't work and generally dragging feet on Vision hear that this customer is NOT satisfied and will be switching to some other product before this year's Vision license expires. I'll keep posting about Vectorworks issues, however... Not going to give up 25 years of sunk cost in that program. At least MVR gives me options. peace aj
  17. After installing SP4 for Vision 2021, I get this on launch: MA3 Net does not work anymore. Anyone else have this problem? peace aj
  18. @bbudzon@Hans-Olav@mjm@jeff prince Looks like that fix made the cut! My crowd figures now look like this after MVR export with no further action required: Thanks!!!!!! peace aj
  19. Hi Y'all... Pour yourself a coffee and tuck in; this is a long one! I'm having trouble mapping an NDI stream to various LED tiles placed on stage in set carts. The set looks like the following screenshot. All of the display surfaces are LED Screen plugin objects with dimensions and pixels set correctly in the OIP as indicated: The image on the LED screens is set in "Edit Array Image" where a custom texture is selected. Notice that the Scale is set to 50% to get the image to display correctly (the illusion is a stack of TVs with different images). The image used for the texture is only two TVs wide, so this makes sense as applied to the still image in VWX. Changing this scale, however, has no effect on the eventual video mapping problem that we shall see in Vision. I tried exporting MVRs with all of the Scale adjustments in this menu set to 100% and had the same results that are illustrated below. I also wonder what the "Capture Source Name" and "Capture Source Number" are in the "Select Vision Video Source" dialog. These names do not correspond to the names that Vision ends up asking for, and you could put Fred or Ethel in the "Capture Source Name" field and you never see those names come up again throughout the process: But let's not get distracted... OK, so now we move over to Vision, after exporting the LED tiles in their own MVR. The set carts that they travel in get exported as a separate MVR to keep things organized. These two MVRs plus my Amphitheatre MVR merge together in to this model: Let's begin by selecting our first LED array (in this case the 4 tile square array top center) and choosing Assign Video Input: We assign the video input a name: The video input is fed via NDI from a MacBook Pro running Resolume Arena. The NDI monitor on the Vision PC shows a smooth, steady video image in real time: We find the 1920x1080 NDI input that is being scaled by 1/3 to give us a raster of 640x360 for use in Vision. So let's crop the NDI stream! I scaled my 1080 template down to 640X360 in Photoshop to determine the exact corners of every crop and wrote them down (analog, in a notebook with a pencil) because the cropping tool in Vision is rudimentary at best. You can't zoom in on it, there's no grid or snap guide... best to use the tools in Photoshop and write down the pixels. So we get our square crop for our square video surface: And we do it for each of the LED screens in the model: During this process, plan to spend a lot of time looking at this screen, waiting for Vision to "see" the NDI input that it "saw" just perfectly moments ago: Eventually we have created 13 separate crops of the NDI raster and mapped them to our LED screens. And here is the confusing result: Note the different scaling of the crops! Nothing seems to work out right, except the SR High and SL High set carts! The 2wide x 4high carts are the only ones that display the crop faithfully. The Ctr Top crop is perfectly square, mapped to a perfectly square screen. It ends up stretched vertically. Ditto the Ctr Bottom... that one is stretched vertically and doubled. The math certianly does not work for the downstage 3wide x 1high boxes. Playing with the texture scaling and offset in Vision does not help... You can't fix an asymetrical scale as is occuring here. If we use Vectorworks to create an LED screen and send it to Vision, and Vision has the ability to crop an incoming NDI stream, why doesn't this just work? I did try sending the crops from Resolume as separate NDI streams but Vision could not see them as separate. Any help would be appreciated. Getting this model to work will greatly increase the chances that it will be useful to me before we get to rehearsals. Thanks peace aj peace aj
  20. @klinzey Thanks again for creating this post! I have been constantly referring to this post as I continue to refine the MVR workflow between Vectorworks and Vision. I believe that I may have found an error on the MVR export. Specifically I have been working with Image Props using some stock characters. It seems that the "main" image texture steals the "Transparency" image upon MVR export. All shaders set to "Image": I still don't know why the preview looks transparent. Just to verify, here is the Image in the Color Shader: Reflectivity, Transparency and Bump: And here's the result in Vision: Here's what the unzipped .MVR file looks like: As you can see, Greg Front.png (for example) is the same image as Greg FontMask.png If you go in to the textures/scene folder that is generated when you save the Vision scene and duplicate Greg FrontReflectivity and rename it to Greg Front.png, then relaunch and load that scene, you get happy results: So I think that this is a verifiable bug, and perhaps an easy fix? The workaround is quite tedious. It's also a bit tedious that Vision has to create a separate folder for textures. One of the things that I love about Vectorworks is the fact that it imports your images and saves them within the Vectorworks file so you don't have to manage your textures outside of the application. Perhaps there's a way to package this info in the .v3s file and give us a simple Resource Browser functionality within Vision? I hope someone's listening here. I put a lot of time in to figuring this out... peace aj
  21. @bbudzon I was really going to throw this gaming laptop in the street until... Vision became unresponsive for so long that I force quit the app. On relaunch, I took the advice to "reset all defaults and run in Safe Mode" That helped considerably. Damn! I have seen this dialog before, but would plow through without going "Safe" just to keep my window layouts, etc. What exactly is "Safe Mode" then? Is it something I have to turn off, or is it just some misleading vernacular? As in... does the resetting of defaults then start you off "Safe" so you can go screw it up again by messing with texture and haze settings? Is there a way to accomplish this without forcing the app to quit to get the dialog on relaunch? I couldn't find such a function in the Vision app. Putting some settings back to the way I want them is a small price to pay... when this happens again I'll be sure to reset and safe mode the hell out of it. Regarding the different handling of VWX vs. Vision geometry... It has been a habit now for some time to convert what I can to either Mesh or Generic Solids for export. However, is this simply handled in the .MVR export process anyway? There don't seem to be any controls for polygon reduction on MVR export, but VWX Extrudes, for example, must be getting converted to end up in the MVR package for other applications to use? Thanks again peace aj
  22. I'm trying to understand why Vectorworks can save a very complicated file in seconds, and a Vision model built from the very same information can take several minutes to save? I know my Vision model is getting "complicated" but it's really not that huge. About 12 universes of fixtures, some moving trusses, etc. I'm very conscious of the polygon count vs. model responsiveness ratio, but the model performs quite well. When just saving the file, however, it means a coffee break. Seriously, it's taking 3-5 minutes to save the model. Any ideas?? Thanks! peace aj
  23. @JustinVH Where would I go to reach out as you suggest? I have been told to post things here because you guys are always reading the forums. Interestingly enough, cutting and pasting the geometry right back where it was brought it back properly in the destination file in which I was trying to use the symbol, but the same workaround did not work in the source Ampeg file. Weird. Thanks for responding... perhaps I could send tech support a link to this thread so I don't have to type all that out again?🙂 peace aj
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