Decals Not Displaying Correctly In v18a

[markw]

Hi all,

Is anyone else having issues with decals in v18a?

In real-time they don't display properly on the screen but do render out correctly.

Each time a model is loaded the misrepresented decals change.

Here are some shots for your amusement.

The images that get mixed into the decals can be from anywhere I have found; bits from my email window, bits of web browser window, Finder windows, or just random noise, anything really.

I've tried all the usual resets and reinstall of v18a, but it persists.

[NancyGormezano]

Hi all,

Is anyone else having issues with decals in v18a?

In real-time they don't display properly on the screen but do render out correctly.

 

The problem that I was experiencing (ver18-32, PC) seems to have been fixed in 18a: decals were not showing up at all in real-time, but would render fine using opengl3.

 

In ver18a-32, they now show up in real-time.

 

However I am still experiencing crashing if my model has decals and I try to use opengl (not opengl3). Happens in both 18, 18a.

 

So makes me wonder: Have you tested the use of both opengl and opengl3? - don't know if that is an option on mac.

[GAngus]

I very often get this too, when first applying a decal.

Actually this is with v18.0, I have not d'loaded 18.0a yet.

 

It's like old clipboard garbage, with signs of something else I was working on before in there.

Although, there are times when it does not happen at all.

 

Yes, they always seem to render properly, so I never mentioned it before, but it is annoying.

 

Might just be a 'Mac thing'.

Not necessarily an A:M / Mac thing but a Mac / Mac thing, and the way it keeps the clipboard memory clean?

Just an un-educated guess, mind you.

 

The decal here is a JupiterMap

[robcat2075]

When you can show clear repeatable difference between v18a and any previous version that would make for a good AMReports report.

 

Of course, you've already done the obvious things like updating drivers.

[markw]

...Have you tested the use of both opengl and opengl3? - don't know if that is an option on mac.

Good idea Nancy. I've just been trying things now.

Using OpenGL3 it always screws up!

Using OpenGL things are more often displayed correctly but not always.

 

I also tried OpenGL and various combinations of options from the OpenGL settings window but saw no discernible differences. To be honest I have know idea what any of the OpenGL options are supposed to do or why I should want them!

Time for a bug report for I think!

[markw]

I heard back from Steffen about this issue at the weekend. He thinks it may be related to Nvidia GPUs. His Mac has ATI GPUs and he was unable to reproduce the problem on his Mac.

In order to see whats happening and fix it he would need to have a Mac with an Nvidia GPU to go bug hunting on.

 

So in the absence of an imminent fix and you need to see your decals clearly, here are two possible work arounds.

The simplest is to use an earlier version of A:M like v17 or v16 etc.. which should be more usable.

Or, and this is a bit fiddley, you could try this...

If you have a Mac that has an Intel GPU built into the processor, in addition to the Nvidia GPU, running A:M on the Intel GPU cures the decal display problem.

To see if your Mac has one, on your Mac go to: About This Mac > More Info… > System Report > Graphics/Displays. There you will see what GPUs you have.

In order to use just the Intel GPU with A:M you must have no other secondary displays connected to your Mac and you will need to instal a third party app called 'gfxCardStatus' which you can find here: http://gfx.io/

Once gfxCardStatus is running, clicking on it's Menu Bar icon gives a drop down menu, where you should choose 'Integrated Only' this will force the system to use the Intel GPU.

Now launch A:M and the Intel chip will be doing all the real-time display work.

The big downside for me with this is that I have to work with just the laptop's screen. But it dose work.

[a.quaihoi]

Bingo - only Mac book pro's have dual video card setups, discrete + integrated / nvidia + intel etc. not an ideal solution for Mac Pro machines with pro Nvidia cards eg. Quadro's, my CUDA and Open CL is not being used !!!! I got this just for AM !!

[Rodney]

it may be related to Nvidia GPUs

 

I'm not a Mac user but... historically... graphics problems I've had on the PC seem to relate to Nvidia cards as well.

I say 'historically' because it has been many years since I've had an Nvidia card. Almost every system I have had since v13 timeframe has had intel graphics.

The head scratching part for me is that others report they prefer Nvidea cards and avoid intel graphics... the opposite of my experience.

 

Off topic: Where the heck is Nancy?!?

[Fuchur]

I'm an AMD guy... works well too for me. Intel are less fast. That is the whole story about it... especially for gaming and stuff like this, Intels are not even close to the AMD or Nvidia offerings...

See you

*Fuchur*

[a.quaihoi]

I'm thinking about changing my current quadro card in my 3.1 Mac Pro with a Radeon 7950, have been reading up on specs etc. and its pretty good for Mac and Windows, has dual bios so can be used on either, so would make either environment sweet through bootcamp windows or on Mac, I read the other posts with same issues from windows users with Nvidia cards

[Fuchur]

A HD 7950 is quite old already but if you use it for A:M alone it will be still very nice... I have a HD7870 in one of my computers which works fine, but a newer one (RX460, RX 470 or RX 480) should give a nice performance booth if you are playing games too. It really depends on what you are after.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[a.quaihoi]

I know man, trying to juice the most I can out of my exisiting mac pro, its either change up the card to the 7950 ( its still pretty expensive @ over $500 usd ) or buy a 2012 mac pro which ca support the newer cards or just bite the bullet and upgrade to the 2013 mac pro with dual D700 6gb cards, either way its overkill for AM if its doesnt support Open CL rendering etc. but on the there front it will chew through video editing and " normal " tasks, doing the math and the effort required to buy an older machine, then spend money on SSD expansion cards + ram + more SSD drives + new video card - I think the 2013 Mac Pro is looking ideal, but really need to justify that purchase I think by some paying jobs, don't really game on PC's / Macs, we used to back at Momentum Animations with lan mid town madness / quake etc. its all xbox one for gaming at the moment

[largento]

I finally upgraded from my early 2008 Mac Pro about 18 months ago and I went the iMac route this time and it's actually been great for what I've been doing.

 

It's a 5K, 27-inch Late 2015 model with a 4GHz Intel Core i7 processor. I use the Adobe apps mostly and have had no issue.

 

And it was somewhat cheaper. :-)

 

When I made that short film last year, I used my Mac Pro as my renderer and did the main work on my iMac. Was a great thing to be able to keep working while I was rendering. No other way I could have finished it in 33 days!

 

Both of my Macs have AMD graphics cards, though. I upgraded the one in my Mac Pro years ago, but my options were limited and I don't recall there being any improvement using AM.

[a.quaihoi]

Hi Largento, which video card did you upgrade to in the 2008 Mac ? Just curious, I bought the Nvidia Quadro 4800 FX last year for it, and this appears to be the issue with it and AM, read the other forums and people using windows also have the same issues, I was going to install windows with bootcamp but now realise that it wasn't going to solve the problem, interested in which video card you have running in the 2008 ?

[largento]

I might have to double-check, but I'm fairly sure it's the Radeon HD 5870. Which means it's an ATI (not an AMD). I bought it cheap off of eBay from a guy who took a PC version and flashed it so it would work on a Mac. It was a step-up from the 2600 that came with my Mac, but I don't think I ever felt like I gained very much from doing it. It might feel like a big step down from your Quadro 4800.

 

The iMac has an AMD Radeon R9 M390.

 

 

 

 

[a.quaihoi]

yes I flashed a a GE Force card a long time ago for my G4 Mac AM ran great on it back then on the old PPC, yes I did look into ATI cards, but I always seem to get the max power card available for the machine which was

/ is the FX4800, I have been looking at specs on the 7950 and Final cut does get an edge from it, but really AM should be working for the Nvidia Cards, its a PIA like this, I'll see what happens and yes you are right about step down - which is why I'm leaning towards a 2013 Mac pro with the ATI/AMD cards instead of building up a legacy Mac Pro tower all over again, I really invested a fair amount of money in ram on this machine, the only thing that I'm not too fond off on the 2013 mac is being stuck with the graphics card and hard drive upgradeability, sure there are thunderbolt drives available but then buying an external case + drives is more $$$ lets see what happens for now I can work with what I have, the rotoscopes are hit and miss, but toggling the antiscopic settings and open gl versions seems to get them back so I'll finish this project before shelling out for any new hardware and if I get a new machine the 2008 will make a nice windows machine, I sure miss my old dell 540 visual work station which I built up for AM, that thing was a beast with the wildcat 3D card and AM worked on it flawlessly, but its a pain as all my graphics software is licensed for mac and I sold it for a good price to be used as a server

[largento]

My entire reason for buying a Mac Pro back in 2008 was after one too many hard drive crashes and I wanted to have some flexibility. The 2013 Mac Pro seems to go against this. Like you say, you can do external stuff, but I kept hoping that they would eventually go back to something like the older design. It was so well-designed. Easy to swap out stuff and worked great.

 

Granted, my room is now several degrees cooler since I've stopped running it. :-)

[a.quaihoi]

OK ! SO I went and got myself a Radeon 6850 for a bargain of $150 aud . . . specs on paper seem to favour the Mac 2008 over the Quadro FX 4800 I have, even at 1 gig on Radeon vs 1.5 gig on the quadro the Radeon looks to operate faster as the clock speed of the GPU is way faster on the radeon than on the Quadro . . . all spec stuff aside, lets see how AM performs now with the ATI card and the 3,1 mac lives to fight on ! Largento I agree on the expandability of the 2013 video cards, I have been talking to few people and watching videos and see that people are running external GPU's - hacked of course, hopefully Apple will natively support this on the next version, if some one were enterprising enough to come up with a connector / converter cable to allow installing new GPU's it would eb awesome, but its that darn custom form factor in the cylinder macs that makes it difficult, which would mean that you would have to physically modify the case to allow an external connector just for external GPU's that don't connect through thunderbolt - but natively and directly to the motherboard through the converter cable in an external case, I think the external hard drives are ok, but we would have higher capacity flash drives at affordable prices in the future . . . fingers crossed !

[largento]

Success?

[a.quaihoi]

enjoy . . .yes and no . . . mainly no . . . card installed, booted up AM to see the car model I was working on, opens, loads projects . . . crash . . . try it again . . . crash . . . open new project ok, draw stuff, ok . . . turn on shaded wireframe . . . crash . . . crash . . . crash . . . crash . . . then think perhaps its because I had quad view setup, sent project to Dylan so he can close all open windows in project file so it only has to open one window . . . cash . . . exported car model from project ( by Dylan ) open that . . . good, touch a control point or turn on shaded / wireframe . . . crash . . . say . . . F#$%^&!!!! this S#$%$$^&, I'm gunna boot camp it, . . . but wait . . . cant boot off USB on Mac Pro 3,1 . . . okey dokey . . . lets just install win7 from cd/dvd . . . dvd drive is dead . . . take it out . . . ohhnooo its beta ! . . . ummm . . . noooo . . . its ATA / IDE . . . call every friggin compooter store in australia . . . they tell me . . . dude no ones been selling those drives like for the last ten years where have you been ? . . . so now I just bought a second hand 'tested' ATA/IDE drive . . . which will come next week, then I can finally load win 7 through bootcamp and transfer license and have a play . . . ouuu . . . I just realised I didn't uninstall the nvidia drivers so perhaps that could have caused issues . . . either way, come hell or high water I will be getting it to run on this damn mac pro . . . stay tuned for more laughs . . . or hopefully this version 19 is native mac code, that supports open cl and is rock solid , that will make my day

[a.quaihoi]

this is what it looks like . . . https://youtu.be/pwoYKp1a8os

[a.quaihoi]

. . . news flash . . . uninstalled nvidia drivers and no difference . . . looks like the Nvidia Quadro Video card was actually working with AM on this mac better than the AMD card except for the texture / rotoscope / imported images . . . now I am thinking that the Nvidia Quadro card under bootcamp Windows 7 would actually work . . . hmmm . . . more to come when I get that drive to do a install

[Rodney]

I didn't quite follow all of that video and I assume the primary issue is that you cant get OpenGL to run (without failing).

Assuming you can get OpenGL to run... one thing I would not do is switch back and forth between drivers with a project open and without a restart.

In other words, start A:M, change Real Time Driver setting, close out of A:M and then restart.

This closing and reopening is needed to close the loop and seat the change to the other driver.

If we change the driver and then keep on working we (even PC users) risk embracing the desktop.

[largento]

I could be wrong about this, but I seem to recall that if you change Open GL, you need to quit AM and then relaunch first. That might explain the crash after changing your settings.

[pixelplucker]

Your quadro should run AM fine but you may have to fiddle with which OGL in the AM settings depending on the card. If your shopping for a new card and none of your programs use double precision then save your money and get a descent desktop card.

After extensive shopping around and Roger being happy with his AMD RX 480, I snagged one myself. It is really a rock solid card and good bang for the buck. It is basically the same chip and memory set as AMD's new workstation series WX7100 with a different bios and higher voltage requirements than it's workstation counterpart.

 

For brands just stay away from the low end versions like Saphire and XFX or any that only offer a 2 year warranty. Major branks like MSI, Gigabyte or any that offer the 3 year warranty is the way to go and usually the same price. I picked up the gaming series with 8gb from Gigabyte.

 

No matter what brand you pick, make sure the bios is upto date on it, Newegg and others might have good sales on slightly older models with older bios on them. Also use the driver from that supplier rather than directly from AMD and you should be good to go.

 

As far as AMD go i have an all AMD system, it does play games really well but certainly not a number cruncher like a Xeon or high end i7 (6 or 8 core).

 

Unfortunately I haven't renewed my AM sub in a while, been too busy with work stuff and no time to play, will when 19 is out.

[a.quaihoi]

yes guys tried all of that, reinstalled AM several times, the video just shows me trying to open a project and it crashing no matter what I try, I sent the project file to Dylan, he opened in am 2013 no issues on PC then sent me back a model and this was still happening, I'm going boot camp windows or getting a PC specifically for AM like I used to have, its a real shame that the mac version is so unstable, for production work I have been told 2013 is the most stable version on pc so I might revert back to that or have it run alongside the new version and see hoe it goes

[Rodney]

I have been told 2013 is the most stable version on pc

 

I"m hardly in a position to question that and yet...

 

If you got that recommendation from Dylan he may be slightly influenced by someone who suggested v13 was the last release Martin wrote code on. Theoretically that alone would make it better... automatically! BUT there have been so many useful and production worthy improvements since v13 that I wouldn't want to use it instead of current releases. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Now, that does not invalidate the theory that v13 might be the most stable for production but there is surely a long list of criteria that would need to be checked off in order to make it true.

 

I could certainly think of many reason why v13 would be on or near the top of the list and I can think of a few that have little to do with how stable the release is.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of variables to consider but the statement alone suggests that a few definitions might need to be set and additional details examined before I'd even begin to consider v13 a more reliable release that those that came later built upon v13's very substantial foundation.

 

But you've definitely got me curious. One question that immediately springs to mind: Is there even a 64bit version of v13?

If not then.... 'tis mothballs for v13... and if 'yes' then the jury is still out with no estimate of time for release of a verdict.

My memory seems to set the 64bit release circa v15.

Hopefully someone in the know can confirm. (or I can stop being lazy and look it up)

 

Update: It looks to me like v16 was the first to have 64bit so this makes me think v17g+ should be a very good candidate to start production testing (i.e. use as a yardstick to measure stablity and production readiness from). I will assume everything is plus or minus (more stable/less stable... more feature rich/less feature rich... faster/slower... etc. from that point of reference.

 

Disclaimer: All my theorizing concerns only the PC as I don't have any reference point to draw informed opinion from for the Mac. One reference point: the only addition to v17g+ was to get v17g working on Mavericks when it was first released. That's the reason the 'plus' was added to the release.

 

Of course, the most important thing will be how well A:M works for you on your current system(s).

I just hate to see people miss out on six or more years of excellent productivity enhancements.

 

have it run alongside the new version

 

That sounds like a great idea.

.

[a.quaihoi]

don't get me wrong, I was so hanging for the STL export and the other things, its just frustrating when you're trying to do a job and it behaves the way it does, I've ordered a new DVD drive and should have it this week, then I can get it up and running in windows here it likes to be, I can now try both nvidia and ati cards in the windows environment and will see how it goes, or new dell pc and going to be the next AM machine

[Rodney]

I've ordered a new DVD drive

 

Yet another reason to leave v13 behind.

I'm glad we don't need a CD/DVD drive any more.

[a.quaihoi]

ha ha no, I actually need the DVD drive to install windows on my Mac, my old one has died and IDE/ATA Drives are impossible to find in the wild, I actually have access to V13 with the network dongle - so no CD required ;-)

[Rodney]

Ah, understand!

 

I ran across an old dongle for A:M the other day and it made me curious which version it was for as it's been so long ago that I've forgotten.

It *could* be for v13 but I'm not sure. I need to investigate.

 

I remember I purchased the dongle to get access to Netrender... which every A:M User gets these days.

It certainly could be circa v13.

 

Best of luck with your attempt to get up and running with bootcamp.

From what I've heard that should work well for you.

[pixelplucker]

I wish AM was portable and not bound to a machine but rather the person using it. Since the sub version came out I have used AM far less since many times I'm on a laptop and not grinding away on my desktop.

 

Curious if the decal issue is in v19?

[pixelplucker]

Wanted to update that the OGL error I was getting trying to run AM via Remote Desktop seems to be a Remote Desktop caused error because RD doesn't support OGL higher than 3.1.

 

I have no @#$%^ clue why that would even be a limit when it should be using the local machines hardware or the host machines hardware and not determined by RD.

 

So bottom line, AM should be able to run in all it's glory on my Intel based video laptop.

[a.quaihoi]

Yeah, it would be great if we could buy a USB dongle like print software, then you could have it installed on multiple machines and just plug in the usb dongle to operate it, Dylan from momentum has 2013 production which has a network license for multiple computers for a studio environment, I think has should offer this for AM on single license with the ability to upgrade to multiple license on multiple computers like this network dongle, I mean they do this with net render license, so why can't the software also be like this. I installed my mac pro 3,1 with windows 7 - finally ! and am now eating for my license to be transferred over so I can use it on windows booted on my mac pro through boot camp - THAT was a mission !

[a.quaihoi]

For anyone that has been having trying to install Win 7 on Mac pro via bootcamp if you are having issues, send me a message, I went through it all over the last couple of weeks and have discovered something - boot camp does tidily squat on the older mac pros 2008 - 2009 etc. If you're trying to figure out how to install windows and it aint working message me and I'll tell you how to do it, now after two weeks of stuffing around I have a pretty awesome dual Xeon professor Windows machine with a kick arse video card which is also a mac ;-) . . . now if orders@hash could kindly send me my license file so I can run AM in windows - that would be awesome - chop chop - time is money orders@hash

[Rodney]

orders@hash

 

Recommend you ping jason@hash.com and let him know you put in a request to orders@hash.com

[a.quaihoi]

cheers Rodney ! I will do that, I really want to see AM running oaths mac pro with windows 7 and see if the issues with the Nvidia card remains