Digital Art Zone

I think I posted this before. I don’t think I got much, if any, response. Maybe I’m the only one getting it. Or maybe others aren’t responding for whatever reasons.

In any case, when saving a scene, occasionally and apparently randomly, when saving I’ll get an “Error executing Save As…” message, and the save will fail. I’ve been totally unable to figure out what is causing it.

I’ll save a scene, no problem. Then make some character pose changes, then save it again, and suddenly I’ll get the message. No rhyme, no reason. Work on a scene for hours, can’t save it. Makes me very mad. I’ve been getting this problem on and off for probably at least a year with various scenes. Maybe more. 

I’ve tried just saving individual characters in the scene as objects instead of the whole scene, but I’ll get the excellent error message “Error executing ’ “, where apparently the programmer screwed up and didn’t set up his error messages correctly. And I’ve tried to narrow down the scene by stripping out objects and shaders until I get to the bare bones, and still the message.

Now not only is this message causing me grief, but I’ve been getting many annoying errors in this recent beta that haven’t been resolved. Which is why I don’t think they’ll finish it for a while. And why when it’s done, if they don’t fix all these errors, I’m gonna be super pissed at not only this version’s lack of features but also it’s total lack of quality. I can’t recall such a miserable Carrara beta.

And please, don’t anybody tell me that if I don’t do enough work to find and report the errors I shouldn’t complain when it comes out with problems.

it’s useful to check “remove unused items”, before saving… I get that message after changing a lot of items…

I’ve gotten these vague error popups when attempting to save or render, sometimes all it takes is parenting one object to another.

Sometimes removing unused objects and shaders helps.

Joe

I have reasonably “consistent” “save as” problems when

- I choose ;texture” in shader room but don’t pick one
-after dragging a figure in the hierachy somewhere else
-when my hard drive was dieing

also- when saving big (approx 1.5gig) compressed files occasionally

i use 8.1.1.1 pro build 12

good luck

Hi,

Just to add another voice to this, I only get this occasionally but it is always when trying to save while in the middle of a process;

eg when in 3d paint or if I jump out from editing a morph without properly finishing it. I believe it’s the same for selecting a texture in a shader.
It can get worse if you constantly jump in and out of some modes without completing them as Carrara loses track of various references.
(Bone creation and weight painting probably has a similar issue)

As suggested, clearing unused objects and shaders can help tidy things up but also try making sure that you haven’t left anything hanging.

Oh and the usual blah, save sequentially, save often.

(My process is to build a scene in small parts which only come together at the final stage so there’s only really one point where the save time becomes an issue)

RoguePilot - 05 December 2012 02:21 PM

I only get this occasionally but it is always when trying to save while in the middle of a process;

Hmmm…interesting. Never thought of that.

I’ve developed an almost nervous tick where I instinctively and constantly hit the two keyboard shortcuts I’ve set up to “removed unused” stuff, so I doubt it’s that. But unfinished processes might be something…

Though I think the last time I was just changing poses prior to the failed save developing…I’ll have to keep track next time. Thanks for the suggestion.

In any case, it’s a shame they can’t do a better job or programming to prevent stuff like this.

JoeMamma2000 - 05 December 2012 03:52 PM

RoguePilot - 05 December 2012 02:21 PM

I only get this occasionally but it is always when trying to save while in the middle of a process;

Hmmm…interesting. Never thought of that.

I’ve developed an almost nervous tick where I instinctively and constantly hit the two keyboard shortcuts I’ve set up to “removed unused” stuff, so I doubt it’s that. But unfinished processes might be something…

Though I think the last time I was just changing poses prior to the failed save developing…I’ll have to keep track next time. Thanks for the suggestion.

In any case, it’s a shame they can’t do a better job or programming to prevent stuff like this.

At the very least they should put in an ‘Are you sure, really? You’re not finished you know’  popup message.
I’m pretty sure I can trace a few crashes back to this sort of thing too, both in scene building and rendering.

And what’s particularly annoying is once a scene fails to save, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything you can do to get it to ever save.

Right now I have a scene that saved okay, then I did some character pose changes (nothing more), then tried to save it and got an error. Now I’m pretty sure there isn’t any obvious process I didn’t finish, unless there’s some internal thing it’s waiting for. But I shut down any open windows in the shader room, removed unused stuff, and can’t think of anything else that might be hanging. But I can’t find anything that I can do to get it to save.

Arrrgh…...

So when it fails to save, does it go into the dreaded Zombie mode and not allow you to do anything else?

evilproducer - 05 December 2012 08:31 PM

So when it fails to save, does it go into the dreaded Zombie mode and not allow you to do anything else?

Nope. It just pops up the error requester, you select okay, and you’re back in business. Except that, from then on the scene is un-save-able. And what’s even more particularly annoying is that it waits almost until the end of the save operation to decide it can’t save it. And for a big scene that can be a very long time. And after all that waiting, it finally tells you, “Sorry…”

Quite strange, and it never happened with any other versions of Carrara. Just these latest betas.

FWIW, I believe I may have developed an unproven theory on what might be causing my problem. I could be all wet on this since I haven’t been able (or really tried…) to reproduce it, but it’s the best guess I have…

Often I’ll use Carrara to generate single images (not animations). And often as part of those I’ll use Bullet to drape cloth on the character.

Now, for single images I would normally set up the scene’s timeline to start and end at t=0. But since Bullet requires more than zero time to drape (unfortunately it doesn’t do an offline pre-drape) I need to set the timeline for a certain duration.

Now, that causes me problems. I’ll run the sim for, say, 1/2 second to get the drape. And then I’ll forget I’m not at t=0 and make changes (poses, etc.) to prepare the next image.

Of course, that throws a monkey wrench into the works….

Especially since Bullet hasn’t been able to deal with moving characters.

So then when I realize I’ve been making all my changes at t=0.5 rather than t=0 I have to figure out a way to transfer everything I’ve done at t=0.5 back to t=0.

Easier said than done….

Yeah, you can use the new “Memorize” and “Restore” features to transfer the poses and morphs (well, when it works…). But another option I use for shaders, etc., is to delete keyframes at t=0 and move the keyframes I’ve made at t=0.5 into the t=0 position. And I think THAT may be at the root of my problems.

When you delete certain keyframes at t=0 (usually I just delete the bone rotation and/or morph keyframes) I think it screws up the scene and erases some really important information. And as a result the scene fails to save.

Yeah, I know there are other ways to achieve this, and I’m not really interested in discussing it. The point here is, I suppose, that deleting keyframes at t=0 may, rightfully or wrongfully, cause havoc.

Personally, I think it would be great, if indeed this is the root of my problem, for the programmers to throw up a warning message before dummies like me do dumb stuff like that.