Blendigo (for Blender 2.63) 3.2.14.0

[ROUBAL]

The only thing that may not be usual in my current project is that the main models have been modelled in part in Blender 2.49b and appended in 2.63a. The hosting file itself has been created in 2.49b,and all its content (the whole scene) appended in 2.63a. But I always had troubles at export with other files 100% made in 2.5x or 2.6x.

That's the reason that pushed me to other renderers : I can't spend hours or days on debugging each time I want to render a scene. I'd really like to use Indigo, because it supports many features that I have not in other renderers, but it is not robust enough and too sensitive to things that are not a problem for other exporters or engines.

I am not currently on my workstation.

I will try to post here a screen shot of the console for my current project. The only error currently signaled is "error 2 - no such directory or file", followed by a chain of subdirectories starting from the current directory project. The file has no obvious reason to exist. It looks like the exporter would expect to see the resulting file of the export before exporting !

As my destination folder for the export contains spaces in the name, I created an other one, shorter with no space... but I got the same result.

The error message is followed by several lines of objects, so it doesn't stop the process apparently, and then the export stops and displays render stopped at 5%, or 78% on a simpler selection, or something else, but never terminates properly.

[StompinTom]

The only thing that may not be usual in my current project is that the main models have been modelled in part in Blender 2.49b and appended in 2.63a. The hosting file itself has been created in 2.49b,and all its content (the whole scene) appended in 2.63a. But I always had troubles at export with other files 100% made in 2.5x or 2.6x.

That's the reason that pushed me to other renderers : I can't spend hours or days on debugging each time I want to render a scene. I'd really like to use Indigo, because it supports many features that I have not in other renderers, but it is not robust enough and too sensitive to things that are not a problem for other exporters or engines.

I am not currently on my workstation.

I will try to post here a screen shot of the console for my current project. The only error currently signaled is "error 2 - no such directory or file", followed by a chain of subdirectories starting from the current directory project. The file has no obvious reason to exist. It looks like the exporter would expect to see the resulting file of the export before exporting !

As my destination folder for the export contains spaces in the name, I created an other one, shorter with no space... but I got the same result.

The error message is followed by several lines of objects, so it doesn't stop the process apparently, and then the export stops and displays render stopped at 5%, or 78% on a simpler selection, or something else, but never terminates properly.

That sounds a bit like confusion with relative / absolute paths. Especially if you're appending from 2.49b, be extra careful about texture file paths. In the Indigo Render Texture Settings panel, I always choose File instead of Blender because I recall having some issues with Blender images and how the file paths get exported.

I suppose that part of Blendigo could use a bit of love.

[ROUBAL]

@StompinTom

Thanks for your suggestion.

I am back on my workstation and I have finally selected a part of the project that shows the problem. The blend file still weights 100MB, compressed.

I have kept just the external hull of my recently modeled Routemaster double decker bus, and a sun lamp.

At export I get what you see on the screen shot of the console. I have set in red color the starting line of the error message. I had not set the texture image for some materials, but even after fixing that it is the same.

You may be right about relative path thing. I will investigate on that side.

[OnoSendai]

@StompinTom

Thanks for your suggestion.

I am back on my workstation and I have finally selected a part of the project that shows the problem. The blend file still weights 100MB, compressed.

I have kept just the external hull of my recently modeled Routemaster double decker bus, and a sun lamp.

At export I get what you see on the screen shot of the console. I have set in red color the starting line of the error message. I had not set the texture image for some materials, but even after fixing that it is the same.

You may be right about relative path thing. I will investigate on that side.

Wow.. that's quite a filename. It may be too long.

[ROUBAL]

No, it is not the file name ! The blender file name is AECindigo003.blend ! I dont think that 12 characters is unusual for a file name. And I used no special character or space. This is the name displayed by Blendigo ! And it is the path of the folders and files created by Blendigo. Not my choice. I have no control over that path, except the root location of the INDIGORENDERS folder. My Blender projects are on a F: disk, but I tried to put the output folder for indigo on my C: disk to avoid path troubles... with no more success.

I have checked my textures path. I had some textures files left to Blender instead of File in indigo texture fields, but I am almost sure that it is not the source of the problem (anyway, fixing that hasn't changed anything), because I can export correctly the bus driver and conductor characters , and they have their clothes textures files set to Blender.

[StompinTom]

That looks like the object / mesh name. Can you check the object and mesh names in Blender for that object? Looks like there's a whole essay in there.

[ROUBAL]

The Object and Mesh name are the same : DoubleDecker

What could be the trouble with that name ? I tried to use different names for mesh and object, with no difference, except that the error line path displays the new mesh name first, as expected.

[StompinTom]

Well, it seems to be writing a whole lot more as a file name for some reason. If you look at the console screenshot you posted, it's not just the 2 red lines, it's also the 6 lines below those that are being included as the file name.

Silly question, but you've tried renaming it, yes? Could you upload the scene?

[ROUBAL]

I have just uploaded the blend file here (around 100MB) :

http://3d-synthesis.com/BlenderTests/AECindigo005.blend

I had already written a post, but the bandwidth may have been to narrow for upload and forum together, and I have lost the connection.

I hope that all texture are inside the blend. Please don't use any of the included materials.

I have tried to rename everything : blend file, mesh, material, except the texture files that may be long for some of them.

[StompinTom]

No worries. I'll take a look.

[ROUBAL]

Thanks in advance.

I forgot to say that layer 1 is the layer with the trouble : can't be exported.

Other layers can be exported separately or together as well without problem.

[StompinTom]

Ok. It seems as though Blendigo is doing a funny thing where it appends the material names to the object name when it exports. Since your bus has about 9 million materials assigned to it, it naturally makes for a file name that is way too long.

I'm a bit confused as to why Blendigo needs to do this, it seems like an unnecessary step and I don't recall it doing that before.

I would usually recommend you separate the model according the materials as a work-around, however in this case it wouldn't work seeing as all the bits are mostly integrated into one mesh.

Interesting issue, I've never had so many materials applied to a single object which is why I've never run into this.

EDIT: Just to clarify, the file name that is 8 lines long (in your above post where you highlighted the first 2 lines in red) contains the names of all the materials used by that model, which doesn't really make sense if the materials get exported separately anyway.

[StompinTom]

This is after going P->By Material and then manually deleting the unused materials for each object. I didn't do the whole model because I can't spend time on it, but it works.

You can see, though, that certain areas have holes in them where you had a continuous mesh, because of the SubD modifier.

Definitely an issue that needs to be fixed.

[ROUBAL]

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EDIT: Just to clarify, the file name that is 8 lines long (in your above post where you highlighted the first 2 lines in red) contains the names of all the materials used by that model, which doesn't really make sense if the materials get exported separately anyway.

I had understood that Blendigo displayed the mesh and materials attached to it, by looking at the files in the folders structure created by Blendigo in the Output path.

In the past, Blender 2.49b and earlier allowed only 16 materials per mesh. Since 2.5x, we have more freedom without this materials number limitation. Coming back to older method just for indigo would be really a nonsense.

EDIT : I just see your test : Well, my model is already composed of many parts, as it is a very detailed model with inside and outside modelled up to the single rivet. I can't cut each part of my models in smaller pieces just to render them in indigo, when it renders in one click in Octane. Added to that, later I plan to animate the scene. Objects cut in many small parts will be source of problems. I had thought to come back from Octane to Indigo because Octane doesn't support well animation... I don't want to fall in other problems using indigo.

The WIP page :

http://3d-synthesis.com/52-AEC-Routemaster.html

We should have the choice of the render engine without having to redo completely the models. I think that Blendigo definitely has to be improved.

[StompinTom]

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We should have the choice of the render engine without having to redo completely the models. I think that Blendigo definitely has to be improved.[/quote]

Of course, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. We just need to make sure we track down the reasons why it doesn't work so it can be fixed. Nice model, by the way.