What is Vision doing here?

[MartinBlomberg]

Hi all!

 

In VW2021 I've made a model of a venue and a light plot containing trusses, hoists, lighting devices and so on.

I then exported the venue (no trusses, lights, hoists) as a ESC file and imported it to Vision. So far so good (I think).

Next, I exported the trusses, hoists, lighting devices and everything else used in the set design as a MVR file.

Most of the things look ok, but why, oh why, does Vision import (or Vectorwork export) it like this?

File with white background is from VW2021, before exporting. 

As you see, hoists are up side down and no truss is visible. But still the chains are at the correct position.

And yes, all classes are visible during export 😃

 

I asked this question on FB as well but no answer so far. Thanks all! Looking forward!

 

Martin

 

 

[bbudzon]

6 hours ago, MartinBlomberg said:

Most of the things look ok, but why, oh why, does Vision import (or Vectorwork export) it like this?

This is definitely odd! And it is hard to say if the issue is import/export side.

 

6 hours ago, MartinBlomberg said:

I then exported the venue (no trusses, lights, hoists) as a ESC file and imported it to Vision. So far so good (I think).

Next, I exported the trusses, hoists, lighting devices and everything else used in the set design as a MVR file.

In general, I recommend avoiding ESC entirely. See the link below for reasons why:

 

Moving on:

Try exporting the entire VWX as a single MVR and import that into Vision. See if this fixes the issue. If not, MVR is constantly getting updated and ESC is moving more towards legacy. This is a blessing and a curse for ESC. While ESC is generally a much poorer format than MVR, it may prove to be more stable. Try exporting the entire VWX as a single ESC and import that into Vision. See if this fixes the issue.

 

One last thing that we can try to do to narrow down the issue is:

Export the entire VWX as an MVR. Create a new VW document. Import then MVR into this blank VW document. See if things are correct or broken.

 

Only other tip that may help us narrow this down is exporting the entire VWX as a 3DS file. This obviously will not transfer fixtures as fixtures (they may just be geometry). But, we can use this 3DS file to import back into both VW and Vision (use new documents when importing). This might help us determine if the issue is import side or export side as well.

 

Lastly, posting your VWX here for us to test internally may prove useful. When we can replicate issues it is much easier for us to find out if there is a bug in the code 😉 

[Jesse Cogswell]

@MartinBlomberg  I've had a lot of trouble with the MVR export in the past in regards to things that are not lights (and sometimes even with lights, like conventionals losing their color or focus on export), so I've resorted to continuing on with ESC for most geometry.  Bbudzon is right that the geometry is often prettier with MVR (there's some poly smoothing, better normals handling, etc), but I've often run into the same thing you are seeing with trusses disappearing.

 

I did do some tests this morning on my current project and it seems like geometry disappearing is a problem on the VW side of things with the MVR export.  When I export my truss position and fixtures, only the fixtures come across on the import.  If I export just the fixtures, the file size is the same.  If I try to export just the hanging position, my MVR file is a single kilobyte and functionally empty.  It would appear that VW2021 does not properly export Hanging Position objects.  When I converted my Hanging Position to a group and exported again, the truss properly came across the import.

 

Doing further testing, I could not make a Hanging Position object export in MVR, no matter the geometry.  This seems like a bug.

 

 

[MartinBlomberg]

@bbudzon Thank you so much for your reply!

I'm trying to export the venue as an MVR file, but it just takes more then forever. 

20min in and I'm at 5%. 

 

The file is quite large and complex, still want it? 😃 

 

Thanks for everything! // martin

Edited March 8, 2021 by MartinBlomberg

[MartinBlomberg]

Here are the two files. One with the venue and one with only the lighting devices and a LED screen. This is super weird. 

LIGHTS V1.mvr Partille arena Vision 2.mvr

[bbudzon]

5 hours ago, MartinBlomberg said:

I'm trying to export the venue as an MVR file, but it just takes more then forever. 

20min in and I'm at 5%.

Ahh, I didn't realize it was that large. We will likely have to break it down into smaller pieces to see if we can find the culprit.

 

1 hour ago, MartinBlomberg said:

Here are the two files. One with the venue and one with only the lighting devices and a LED screen. This is super weird. 

This should definitely help with reproducing here locally.

 

Would it be possible to share a link to dropbox to the VWX? Given the size of it, it may not upload to the forums. But, having a chance to play around with that file and see how things are setup in the VWX will help gain a better understanding of what may be happening.

 

One test that often quickly eliminates importing as an issue is ensuring that the MVR imports into a blank document "the same" in VW and Vision. If they are broken in the same ways, the issue is likely at export time. If they are different, well... I tend to blame Vision because I work on that code and so I can investigate/fix it 🤣

[MartinBlomberg]

17 hours ago, bbudzon said:

Would it be possible to share a link to dropbox to the VWX? Given the size of it, it may not upload to the forums. But, having a chance to play around with that file and see how things are setup in the VWX will help gain a better understanding of what may be happening.

 

Here's a link to a Google Drive folder where both my VW files are. What I can't understand, as well, is why the lighting, LED and all rigging is larger then the actual venue. 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jHk6cjCGY-g7SoKmjWKwS0VO9NVcHviE?usp=sharing

 

Thanks friend! 😃 

[bbudzon]

After playing around with your file some, I can reproduce the issue. The good news is that it seems to work fine in Vision 2021 SP3. So, keep your eyes peeled!

[MartinBlomberg]

1 minute ago, bbudzon said:

After playing around with your file some, I can reproduce the issue. The good news is that it seems to work fine in Vision 2021 SP3. So, keep your eyes peeled!

That's good news, great! So, the current version isn't SP3? Looking forward! Thank you!

[bbudzon]

The current version is Vision 2021 SP2 (2.1 technically, I believe). SP3 usually releases right around this time. So, again, keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks 😉  I apologize for the inconvenience.

[MartinBlomberg]

3 hours ago, bbudzon said:

After playing around with your file some, I can reproduce the issue. The good news is that it seems to work fine in Vision 2021 SP3. So, keep your eyes peeled!

By the way, do you understand why...

1. There are so many classes and layers still left in the "Lights only" file? They remain even though I've purged several times.

2. Why the single trusses act different then the box trusses in terms of looks? 

 

Thanks!

[bbudzon]

1 hour ago, MartinBlomberg said:

1. There are so many classes and layers still left in the "Lights only" file? They remain even though I've purged several times.

I've actually been noticing this lately. I also noticed that some MVR Objects seem to be coming in with 0 UUID. It's hard to say right now, but I will try to investigate.

 

1 hour ago, MartinBlomberg said:

2. Why the single trusses act different then the box trusses in terms of looks? 

MVR Objects that are identified in the MVR as a truss get an override material of "Silver" by default. My guess is that some of your truss items are being properly identified in the MVR Export VW-side and some of them aren't; presumably due to the tool that was used to create the truss or any actions that were performed against it after creation.

 

However, if you set the Truss Material to "Imported" it should not override any materials and all truss should (in theory) look the same.

 

If rather than dropping the material override you'd like to know how to apply the HQ Silver Truss Texture to all trusses after import, let me know and I'll make a little post here about it 😉