PATCH COLORS CHANGING...?

[Kelley]

Continuing my fascination with clunky World War One-ish things, I started to build a seaplane. [bi-plane, center pontoon hull] Last night I was setting Specular highlights. I had done most everything: the hull, engine, fuel tank. nacelle, and the cockpit. [and had Saved] Just before wrapping up for the night, I came back to find that the cockpit nacelle's dark green upper surface, and the brown leather rims, had defaulted to the red used on the nose. Today, I undertook to repair that. After three attempts, I gave up. I can change the colors back. [i remove them from Groups first] But as soon as I assign Specular color, it snaps back to red. Might I have exceeded a limit to the number of colors I can apply to patches? Any ideas?[attachmentid=14721]

[KenH]

My guess is you have the problem area patches assigned to two groups. When you change the specularity, it's refreshing the display and showing you the red.

The groups lower on the PWS will take priority.

So, if this is the case, just un-assign the cps from the red group and it should work.

[Kelley]

My guess is you have the problem area patches assigned to two groups. When you change the specularity, it's refreshing the display and showing you the red.

The groups lower on the PWS will take priority.

So, if this is the case, just un-assign the cps from the red group and it should work.

 

Thanks Ken. Here's a related question. At least I think it is. It seems to me that A:M doesn't like to sit for protracted periods of time with no activity on the screen. [Don't walk away and go to dinner] Things, like some patch colors, have a way of changing. So this evening, I did a Save, closed out of A:M, and re-opened two hours later. First, my Specularity settings were gone. [and not for the first time] Secondly, I had an enormous number of new Groups in the PWS. Nearly 40. With no colors assigned. There were about six when I closed out. It seems that A:M really likes to create Groups, and then replicate them. I've had cases where I'm using lots of patch colors [not so much lately] and I've had well over two hundred Groups. I know the list is replicating because I can see the repeat patterns: 3 Green, 5 white, 1 Yellow, etc. Is there a way to stop this?

 

Also, every time I perfom a function, the Groups Folder opens. If there's a lot of Groups [as above] it means that I have to scroll all the way back to the top to close it and then go find the PWS Control that I wanted. Is there a way to keep the Groups Folder closed?

[attachmentid=14726][attachmentid=14727]

[KenH]

I'm not sure exactly. But I'm not getting the extra groups being made here. Don't you name your groups? I don't know your experience, but everytime you highlight cps, a group is automatically made when you change the surface properties......the automatic name given is GroupXX.

 

So, it seems to me you're constantly manually selecting cps and changing the surface properties.

If you name the group and select the group name at a later time, the assigned cps will be highlighted again.

 

Everytime you click in the model window, the group folder will automatically open. I know it can be a pain if you've alot of groups, but trust me, this system has more pros than cons.

[rusty]

Robert,

 

The things that you are describing -- colors changing, AM creating groups on its own -- trust me, these things do not happen when AM is used properly. I will try to help you out. It very hard to tell what you are doing -- one new person who was having problems had missed the fact that if you do not 'name' the group, the group goes away! We assumed he was naming his groups when in fact he was not. Everybody thought everybody was going crazy until we figured this out.

 

When you select CPs a temporary group is created. It is called 'Untitled'. If you do not name the group (change this name), it will eventually go away. You can adjust all the surface properties of this temporary group and see them appear on your model but as soon as you deselect the temporary group it will go away (it may stay for a while but it will go away). The properties (color) you selected in this temporary group may also 'stay' but will eventually go away.

 

Colors Change

With the above out of the way, a hundred other things can be happening! If a flat patch is directly facing you you will see nothing but the specular color. If you have modeled a pipe and you wish to make it gray with an orange strip and you have extruded a circle 3 times to make the pipe so that you have a section in the middle to make orange... realize that when you make the pipe gray that middle section will completely belong to the gray group. When you select that center section (and name the group) and make it orange the only reason you see the orange color is that the orange group is below the gray group (or the model) in the PWS. Order definitely counts when it comes to groups.

 

I have looked long and hard at the images you have provided and I can not see what is happening except that I think you have a lot of groups. So, I'm just throwing stuff out in the hopes that 'you' will see what is going on. Try selecting a patch within the area that is changing (use the patch select tool) then right click and select 'Remove Groups'. This will show you all the groups that the 'CPs' belong to and may shed a light on what is happening.

 

A:M Creating Groups

Okay, yes, A:M will create groups seemingly on its own. It will do this when you copy and paste parts of your model which belong to any named groups. It looks to me like you had a group named "Group" and you copied some CPs which happened to be all or part of this group and pasted these many, many times -- 33 from what I can see. One thing is for sure, if you did copy and paste CPs that belonged to a group named "Group" this is exactly what you would see in the PWS -- AM numbers duplicate group names exactly like this.

 

I hope some of this helped.

 

Cheers,

Rusty

[KenH]

When you select CPs a temporary group is created. It is called 'Untitled'. If you do not name the group (change this name), it will eventually go away. You can adjust all the surface properties of this temporary group and see them appear on your model but as soon as you deselect the temporary group it will go away (it may stay for a while but it will go away). The properties (color) you selected in this temporary group may also 'stay' but will eventually go away.

 

I believe this is incorrect Rusty. When ever you change the surface properties, AM creates a group that will stay permanently to preserve the changed properties. The first group it creates is called "Group1" and so on.

[Kelley]

Ken/Rusty: I think this is starting to make some kind of sense. Do I name my Groups? Basically, I don't. Not unless the Group will have an animated function, like a wheel or turret. Then, instead of hunting for all the CP's [and inevitably missing a few] I will be able to call up the whole Group. So far, that hasn't happened much.

 

I realize that when I select a few CP's, a Group called 'untitled' is made. And I do try out lots of variations. It would seem then, that A:M is saving all those variations, even without me doing a CTRL_S save. And the huge repeats of Groups must have come from when I selected a large section of the model and did something to it. [maybe re-sizing?]

 

Rusty: Thanks for the lucid, detailed explanation. Today I just discovered the 'Remove Groups' function. That helped in clearing patches for color changes. And I've just come to realize that their order in the list is so important. But I had not realized that changing any surface attribute created a new Group. I am assuming then, that when I set the Specularity, it resides in one of the Groups, not on the model per se? And setting Specularity on, let's say, the engine nacelle, would create a Group, and another setting on the fuel tank would be another?

 

I had been assuming that those Groups with no color swatches had no function. Even most of the colored ones seem to have no function. When I click on them. I most often get a teeny, miniscule yellow bounding box that bounds nothing [often at some distance away from the model]. I delete it and nothing changes. I guess the only way to weed out the useless ones is to name every function, and weed as I go. Or...ignore them altogether and just accept hundreds of Groups.

 

Still, I wonder about those 37 Groups. There were only six when I shut down and went for dinner. There were 37 [in addition] when I re-opened. I guess when you sculpt with 1's & 0's, you have to accept these mysteries. Thanks again.

[rusty]

I stand corrected.

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Robert,

 

The way I know that A:M uses groups is that when a group (of even just two CPs) is changed in any way from the default, i.e. - surface attributes, or plug-in properties, then it will create a group that holds these settings. (bias adjustments and transform locations are the only things stored in the CPs themselves).

 

Groups are therefore used to assign surface attributes and simply allow you to group CPs so you can isolate them in complex models for modeling and rigging.

 

I don't quite understand how you could get 'extra' groups showing up AFTER you save and reopen a project. Or are you just reopening the model and possibly had saved it under a different name?

 

If you can replicate the problem every time, then submit a A:M Report to Hash so they can track down the bug and squash it.

[Stuart Rogers]

I most often get a teeny, miniscule yellow bounding box that bounds nothing [often at some distance away from the model]. I delete it and nothing changes.

I suspect that your teeny, minuscule bounding box is an empty group, which can occur if you delete all the CPs in the group - i.e. the group doesn't disappear just because its last remaining member has been deleted.

 

If you copy and paste a CP that is a member of another group, that group will be duplicated (just the group, not any CPs you haven't selected!). If the CP is a member of several groups, it's very easy to generate a large number of groups. The copies are numbered, as you know, and this can become very confusing if your group-naming convention (well, once you start naming your groups!) already uses numbers, which is why I shy away from doing this except in very specific circumstances.

 

As an aside, just in case you hadn't realised... if you select an existing group in the PWS and hit Delete, the grouping disappears but the CPs remain; if you select an existing group in the PWS, then move the bounding box in the modelling window and then hit Delete, the CPs will disappear. It's the difference between destroying your groceries list and destroying your groceries. It's worth experimenting with this (on a test model, not your WIP!!!) as it can speed up the modelling process. (Don't do this experiment on your groceries, else you'll have nothing for dinner tonight.)

 

The 37 extra groups appearing after restarting A:M seems a bit odd to me. If you can reproduce it, I suggest you take notes and wibble along to AM:Reports.

[KenH]

I have a feeling that the best way to clear it up is to delete all the groups (not activating the model window or the mesh will be deleted) and then go through with the patch tool picking the patches and naming the groups.

I'd say you'd only need about 5 groups. Much neater.