Forest pack trees disapear?

[DigitalMagic]

Hi.  I have a forest pack scene and it renders fine with the trees and everything.
I import a car into the scene and it still renders fine.
The next day I open the scene and the trees are all gone.
I open the original scene without the car and the trees are still there.

This has happened several times.  I do not understand what is happening?
Everything is fine until I open it again later

3ds max 2016  v-ray 3.7   new forest pack and rail clone   windows 7 pro

[Rokas]

Hi

Hard to give any advice. We could troubleshoot the issue if You could sendus both of Your files: without a car, and a car. So we can import it and test it.

If You could tell us exact steps how to reproduce the issue, that would help too.

[DigitalMagic]

Thank you. I will zip it up with the car and without the car and give download links here along with the order of steps. 

[DigitalMagic]

Here are pics 4 and 5.
The road strangely sometimes shows the side texture and sometimes not.
Have no idea why and if it's related to the above problem or not.

Any help is greatly appreciated.  I do not know what to do.
(disregard the sign, it doesn't affect anything).

As far as steps there doesn't seem to be any specific order to reproduce the issue(s).
The scene starts out ok but soon afterward has problems either partway through a render, or when opening the scene again, or sometimes while just working in the scene and things magically go wrong.

[DigitalMagic]

Here is video clip showing the forest pack first present and then disapearing and also the trees flickering

[Rokas]

Would You please try to set Your ForestPack objects to custom edit mode. That way distribution will be locked and should give You less trouble:


Also avoid using collision within forest. That might be unstable in animations.


Thanks in advance for any further comments on this issue you can share with us / our user community (in case some user(s) will run into similar troubles).

[Dragan]

And check if 'camera limit to visibility` is OFF. Some time close limits parameters can clip objects during some camera movement...

[DigitalMagic]

Thank you very much.
I set Forest to custom edit mode.
And selected each forsest object group and changed them to custom edit.

Limit to visibility box is NOT checked. That is what I want right?

I see a place to adjust collision
Collision Radius 100
Do I need to change that to 0 or is there another collision setting somewhere I haven't found?

Sorry I am dumb and unfamiliar with Forrest pack settings so thank you for basic easy instructions because that is what I need

[Dragan]

That should do.
Collision Radius set to 100 will just prevent items to overlap position (touch each other) during distribution.

If all items are in the place and set to Custom Mode + no camera is set to clip view, everything should be fine.

[DigitalMagic]

Thank you again.  I'm rendering a TGA sequence right now (on frame 21) and so far it's working 
The only issue I see at the moment is almost none of the rocks that line the water shore are there, but the trees are staying so far.
Any idea why most of the rocks that line the water edge are gone?

[Rokas]

When You enter "Custom Edit" mode. You lock distribution, that was present in the viewport.
Generally ForestPack display less items in viewport compared to what is rendered.

You can increase display limit in Display Rollout before converting to Custom Mode.

[DigitalMagic]

Thank you that is helpful but I'm talking about the rendered image window.  I am watching a render sequence in progress and the render output windows have hardly any rocks by the water now

[DigitalMagic]

I got most of the way through an 89 frame TGA sequence and the trees disapeared again.
I see the trees disapeared but some of the other forest objects remained.
I aborted the rest of the render and then got this error message:
Attached pics


I watched the image sequence video and the trees are still flickering.



Any ideas what I need to do? I have no idea.

[Rokas]

Dear customer,

Regarding Flickering.
This is known Vray artefact. This is caused due to noise in GI. You need better Global Illumination settings, so they do not fluctuate during the animation. There are few ways to achieve that. Simplest is to use BruteForce for both pirmary and secondary GI bounces. Here is quick crop of Your render using BruteForce/BruteForce:

There are other settings involving LightCache and IrradianceMap, that can be quicker to render but needs more time and tests to set it up. Please refer this in ChaosGroup forums.


Regarding disappearing Forest Items:
Your scene has been created or edited with a non-legitimate Forest license. Disappearing items are part of our protection system.
Please check if you have imported the Forest object from an external source (downloaded from Internet, third-party freelancer, etc.).
We cannot check the origin of your scene, but for sure the object included on it was created using a non-legitimate license.

Please delete all the Forest objects from it and recreate them from scratch. Trying to move the settings from this contaminated scene can cause instability and possible future issues.

If You continue to have disappearing objects, when creating ForestPack items from scratch, that means illegitimate license is on Your system and You need to remove it.
Please write us helpdesk@itoosoft.com and we will continue the conversation.

P.S. General tip: always work to true scale and near 0,0,0 coordinates. Now Your current scene is far from origin and very very large. Working in scale is quicker and not doing so can cause other issues down the line as well.

Regards

[DigitalMagic]

Thank you for the help. Your render scene looks good with no flickering trees.

I bought the forest scene from online 3d site.
I am using a licensed forest pack pro and rail clone I bought at the end of 2019.
I bought forest pack/rail clone because the scene said it was required and I wanted to use the scene.

When I go to about setting it shows my name, serial and says forest pack pro.

When I am working with the scene I notice the forest trees might be present in viewport until render and then diapear.
Or the trees might just disapear in the viewport at random times. Or it might all work fine and render fine for a number of frames. The behavior is inconsistant and strange.

So I have a valid license (unless there is some problem, how do I know?) so the orginal scene must have been created with illegitimate license?

I will look into the v-ray settings you talked about and see if I can adjust so the forest trees do not flicker.

So I need open my scene and delete all forest pack objects.  Can I leave the rail clone objects, they seem to be working fine?  And then I need to make new forest trees and rocks etc with forest pack.  Correct?

Thanks again for the help. I am excited about forest pack. I am trying to learn more and really want it to work correctly. I have lots of plans for it.