Digital Art Zone

I’m having this freezing problem with Carrara in the last few months… or more specifically when I try to perform certain functions, I get a message that “an error has been encountered” and I have to quit Carrara. Sometimes I can quit… other times I have to force quit.

Here are a few of the functions which seem to cause the problem:
1. If I drag an object I’ve created in the past from “My Objects” the error will occur if there is a texture map which has to be relocated. I’ll get the normal box which asks me to locate such and such a texture, but when I’ve located it and hit “OK” the error message pops up and Carrara freezes.

2. If I try to re-open a project I’ve done in the past through the drop-down menu, I’ll often get the “error” message and freeze. But if I go to the folder where the project is, and double click it… it’ll open properly.

3. If I’m working in the Vertex Modeler and try to place images in the Global Backdrop views… I get the “error” message and the freeze.

4. If I’m creating a texture and want to load a texture map… when I pick the image and click OK I get the “error” message….

It seems there’s a pattern…. something to do with linking external images… but I don’t know if it’s a Carrara problem or a Mac problem. I don’t have any problems running any other software (like Photoshop, or Illustrator). I own Daz Studio but almost never use it so can’t say if it has the same issues.

I’m on an intel iMac. I’m running Carrara Pro 8.1 Build 153 (64bit). I can’t say for sure when this problem began… but possibly when I upgraded to this version? Anyway, I’m hoping that someone with more technical expertise than I have might be able to help me solve the problem.

Thanks

Carrara 8.1 has serious problems with Lion. It crashes every time it tries to open an image or file. A few people on the forums have found ways to get it to run, I haven’t been that lucky. The new version (8.5) currently in beta fixes most of the issues with Lion.

Thanks so much. I have downloaded 8.5 but haven’t installed it yet. I believe they recommend that we not un-install 8.1 when we install 8.5…
Is that true, and is that what you’ve done?

Thanks again

Yes. Install 8.5 in a new folder and it should work OK. There’s a problem with the 8.5 serial number. It expired on July 14. Hopefully, there will be a new beta or an extension with a new serial number tomorrow.

My experience on Windows: fixing hard drive errors using one of the utilities tools, eliminate all kind of errors and issues with Carrara. Might help on Mac too.

Yes… I believe I do have a couple of issues with the computer’s drive as well. I have to say, that I installed 8.5 on Monday (I guess it was) when DAZ released a new serial number. As far as I can tell it doesn’t seem to have the problem with images that was frustrating me before. I am breathing again…. I use Carrara a lot in my work, and suddenly it seemed almost unusable because of these weird glitches.

I’m currently using 8.1 though for most everything I’m doing because of another problem. I’ll probably post a new topic once I’ve re-opened 8.5 and really used it to make sure I’m right about this. It seems that once I create a new scene, or open an existing scene, all of those standard SCENES, OBJECTS, and SHADERS in the browser are not there. I thought they were just part of the basic install. I don’t remember searching for them and re-installing them when I went from Carrara 7 to 8. Also, there’s a weird problem with my CONTENT (purchased models, etc.) When I do all of the regular “Add Runtime…” and “Autodetect Runtimes…”. The list of all the content appears in the browser’s first column. But when I click on the names, there is no icon in the field on the right…so there’s nothing there. Like I say, I haven’t really gotten into 8.5 yet, but any thoughts anyone has would be appreciated.