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Author Topic: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0  (Read 1335 times)

BN1107

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Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« on: March 17, 2023, 12:29:14 PM »
Hi There,
I've found a bug in the latest release of Forest Pack Pro version 8.1.0 that wasn't there in 8.0.9. I can confirm that rolling back to 8.0.9 fixes the following behaviour:

In my scene I have a number of Forest Packs where the objects that it is using to scatter are V-Ray Proxies. Specifically they are V-Ray Proxies that have their viewport visibility set to one of the quick preview settings ('preview from file (edges)'). In general I always have my proxies set like this as it can dramatically speed up viewport performance. Recently I upgraded my Forest Pack Pro installation from 8.0.9 to 8.1.0. Upon re-opening my Max file (latest version of Max 2023.3 Update) I was greeted with a viewport full of masses of crazy geometry. Eventually I tracked it down to the Forest Pack objects. I set my Forest Packs to be visible in the viewport as pyramid obects, again for viewport interactivity, but now all of my Forest Packs were displaying as if the link back to the V-Ray Proxy object was broken i.e. they were now displaying as large boxes.
Obviously I checked to see that the proxies were pathed correctly, and they were. I tried manually clicking on the Build button Forest Pack, but no difference. I then selected the V-Ray Proxy object itself and changed it's Display Preview type from 'preview from file (edges)' to 'show whole mesh', and bingo, the Forest Pack repaired itself and displayed correctly as little pyramids. This had to be done maunually to all the proxies used by all the Forest Packs.
Obviously this process can be sped up by selecting all the proxies at once and typing '$.display = 4' in the command line input box, but it's very annoying to have to do this. Even worse upon saving and closing Max, then re-opening the file again, the Forest Packs have all gone back to displaying as a crazy jumble of massive boxes.
Uninstalling FP 8.1.0 and rolling back to 8.0.9 completely fixes this issue. Could you look into what is causing this please? Currently I am unable to use the latest version

Best regards

Paul Roberts

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Re: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2023, 02:33:40 PM »
HI,

Thanks for your message. I'm just trying to reproduce the issue here on a simplified scene but so far no luck. Would you please try the attached file and let me know if it works OK for you? If it does, if you wouldn't mind reproducing the issue on your side and sending it to us in a simplified scene that might help us get to the bottom of the problem.

Many thanks,

Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

BN1107

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Re: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2023, 06:38:41 PM »
Update: I tracked the error down to a single Forest Pack object that was seemingly corrupted. When I deleted it, saved the scene, quit Max and reopened the scene again the visual craziness was gone. It was an object that displayed in the viewport as just a yellow FP icon with no objects, yet in the Forest Lister it reported that it had 42 objects, which was weird
I have no idea why everything was seemingly fine in 8.0.9, and this only happened in 8.1.0, but as long as it doesn't happen again I'm not too bothered!

Edit: Update to the Update, nope, it's back! Closed and reopened Max and this is what I see:
« Last Edit: March 17, 2023, 06:50:26 PM by BN1107 »

RealViz

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Re: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2023, 11:59:03 AM »
Update: I tracked the error down to a single Forest Pack object that was seemingly corrupted. When I deleted it, saved the scene, quit Max and reopened the scene again the visual craziness was gone. It was an object that displayed in the viewport as just a yellow FP icon with no objects, yet in the Forest Lister it reported that it had 42 objects, which was weird
I have no idea why everything was seemingly fine in 8.0.9, and this only happened in 8.1.0, but as long as it doesn't happen again I'm not too bothered!

Edit: Update to the Update, nope, it's back! Closed and reopened Max and this is what I see:
I think this is a common 3ds max bug where a different scale (cm, m, inches) was set in the previous session. When you open a different scene, some objects are incorrectly converted and are maybe 1000x bigger. Try to set the units in 3ds max to the ones the scene has and only then open (CTRL+O - so not launching max from totalcommander/explorer).

BN1107

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Re: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2023, 10:06:44 AM »
It's a good suggestion, RealViz, but sadly I doubt it's the cause in this case, as we rather boringly have only ever used metres/metres as our Max units for as long as I can remember. The proxies are all custom made, also in metres

Paul Roberts

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Re: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2023, 10:10:59 AM »
Hi,

Can you please send us a problematic scene file to helpdesk@itoosoft.com so we can reproduce the problem. So far we can't replicate it here and we've had no other reports of something similar, a file that reproduces the issue should help us to identify the problem.

Many thanks in advance,

Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

BN1107

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Re: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« Reply #6 on: March 23, 2023, 11:07:18 AM »
In true frustrating style, I'm having trouble getting the bug to reproduce on a stripped-down scene. The overall size of the scene is about 100GB including all assets! Having removed some big animated alembic proxies, along with a bunch of irrelevant content, I've gotten it down to under 1GB but now the bug no longer happens. Which may be important in itself?

iToo

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Re: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« Reply #7 on: March 24, 2023, 09:20:16 AM »
Without reproducing it, we don't know what may the problem.

It seems something related with the mesh generated by the proxy. But checking our release notes, i cannot find any relevant change between FP 8.0.9 and 8.1.0 which may cause this.
Always there are other minor changes between releases, and some of them may be the cause. But that is much more difficult to trace.

In any case, we need to reproduce the problem consistently here. If not, we have not any clue to follow.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

BN1107

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Re: Bug in Forest Pack Pro 8.1.0
« Reply #8 on: March 27, 2023, 11:22:59 AM »
I completely understand! I will keep my eye out for this again in the future. Hopefully it was a one-off freak occurance, but should it happen again then hopefully I will be able to figure out what caused it by virtue of common behavior between scenes. Thank-you for your help to this point.