Materials disappears the next day

[vladimir.nedev]

Modo break all the links in schematics when an item is moved from one scene to another. This is REALLY frustrating as a lot of vray materials need be be done in schematics. I have also bugged this and spoke to them (TF) about it a few times without success. It is a workflow killer!

I didn't realize this the last time we spoke about this issue, but it seems there is a workaround for it.
You need to make sure that all materials/textures that are part of your Schematic connections, are inside the Shader Tree (and not the "Nodes" folder).
You can put them in a group below their Shader Tree material.

So instead of this:



Do this:



You can even uncheck "enable" on the "Schematic Nodes" group to be sure it won't affect your rendering.

MODO is actually clever enough to remember the connections, what it doesn't move from scene to scene are the materials/textures that are not part of the Shader Tree.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[BVA]

I didn't realize this the last time we spoke about this issue, but it seems there is a workaround for it.
You need to make sure that all materials/textures that are part of your Schematic connections, are inside the Shader Tree (and not the "Nodes" folder).
You can put them in a group below their Shader Tree material.

you are right, this works, thanks. It was driving me crazy!

[John_Do]

You need to make sure that all materials/textures that are part of your Schematic connections, are inside the Shader Tree (and not the "Nodes" folder).

I also noticed a strange behaviour with this "Nodes" folder : sometimes I use a color correction node to control HDRI appearance, and so I put the HDRI layer in this folder. But the HDRI appears randomly in the viewport on some meshes, some with material tags, some without. Fortunately, it isn't visible at render time, but. Really weird ( and it took me some time to figure out the cause of this ).

[vladimir.nedev]

I also noticed a strange behaviour with this "Nodes" folder : sometimes I use a color correction node to control HDRI appearance, and so I put the HDRI layer in this folder. But the HDRI appears randomly in the viewport on some meshes, some with material tags, some without. Fortunately, it isn't visible at render time, but. Really weird ( and it took me some time to figure out the cause of this ).

[ATTACH=CONFIG]28800[/ATTACH]

When you select a texture in the Shader Tree, MODO tries to show it in the GL view-port, regardless of its actual texture effect.
So maybe that particular code gets confused when the texture is not part of the shader tree at all.
My guess is since Nodal Shading is relatively new (MODO 801), The Foundry still need to update a lot of their old code that assumed that there is only a Shader Tree to worry about.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[John_Do]

I didn't realize this the last time we spoke about this issue, but it seems there is a workaround for it.
You need to make sure that all materials/textures that are part of your Schematic connections, are inside the Shader Tree (and not the "Nodes" folder).
You can put them in a group below their Shader Tree material.

It isn't always possible unfortunately. It takes me 10 min and a lot of trials and errors to figured out that the Texture Switch node is locked in the Schematic through the use of the Node folder, and it can't be moved to the material group. So when I moved my material group in another scene ( I designed it in a simple scene to have faster preview ), the links between the Texture Switch - Variation Texture - Diffuse channel were broken, as the nodes organisation was lost. No big deal but it seems that Modo is quickly confused when you want to share materials between scene or save presets. I also noticed that shared texture locators between multiples layers ( like I like to do with procedural textures for easier scaling ) are lost when material presets are imported in a scene, and Modo creates a unique texture locator for each layer.

MODO is actually clever enough to remember the connections, what it doesn't move from scene to scene are the materials/textures that are not part of the Shader Tree.

On my side Modo remember the connections but not the overral nodes organisation. Is it normal ?

I hope all these little annoying things will be corrected in future Modo updates !

[vladimir.nedev]

It isn't always possible unfortunately. It takes me 10 min and a lot of trials and errors to figured out that the Texture Switch node is locked in the Schematic through the use of the Node folder, and it can't be moved to the material group. So when I moved my material group in another scene ( I designed it in a simple scene to have faster preview ), the links between the Texture Switch - Variation Texture - Diffuse channel were broken, as the nodes organisation was lost. No big deal but it seems that Modo is quickly confused when you want to share materials between scene or save presets. I also noticed that shared texture locators between multiples layers ( like I like to do with procedural textures for easier scaling ) are lost when material presets are imported in a scene, and Modo creates a unique texture locator for each layer.

Yes, unfortunately channel modifiers and the texture switch are not considered texture layers, so they can't be part of the Shader Tree.

On my side Modo remember the connections but not the overral nodes organisation. Is it normal ?

I am not sure, maybe organizing the nodes in their own work-spaces and assemblies might help.
But I haven't used work-spaces/assemblies extensively. Might be better to ask on The Foundry forums about this.

I hope all these little annoying things will be corrected in future Modo updates !

You should report them to The Foundry.

Also the behavior/bugs seems to be different based on whether you are
- importing a .lxo file into another
- saving/using an item preset
- saving/using a material preset
- dragging items from one scene to another

So be sure to specify which one you are doing.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[John_Do]

Hello,

Sorry to bring up this topic again but I still have this issue on my scenes. The real trigger seems to be the drag-n-drop of meshes from an external scene to the current scene. ( tested on a freshly installed Modo 902sp3 without any kit or plugin except V-Ray )

I tried everything to reproduce this bug on a simple scene ( with spheres and basic materials ), but I can't get the bug to happen willingly. Only on projects scenes.

I even tried to reinstall the OS ( Win10Pro ) and Modo, nothing has changed, the problem still happen in the trapped scenes.

TF support told me that they can't reproduce the bug, so they can't solve the issue. I'm just stucked, I can't work with V-Ray with a random bug like this, I lose a crazy amount of time repairing my scenes, so bad because V-Ray is getting better and better with each nightly and it's a pleasure to use it in Modo.

- Am I the only one to encounter this bug ?
- Updating to Modo 10.1 could improve the situation ?

[BVA]

Hi John_Do

I used to have endless issues with this too. Mine was mostly caused by the materials created in schematics. It is a modo bug...it does not take over the schematics from one scene to another if you drag the items over. I find this a HUGE frustration and have also spoke to them about it many times.

The only workarounds I have is to:
1. Save out presets and import them into the new scene
2. Sometimes the materials come with if all the maps etc are in the same material mask. Unfortunately the links sometimes break when you drag it to a new scene. the solution is to manually reconnect them. Just be sure all nodes are in the shader tree under the material mask, otherwise they will not import correctly.

Hope this might help a little

PS. TF dont see this as a bug. they see it as a feature request.

EDIT:Sorry, I was a bit lazy and didn't scroll down this threat...all this has been discussed already in here

[vladimir.nedev]

You are talking about the bug where everything below the Render item disappears, right ?
What happens when you run the "vray.fixShaderTree" command ?

Besides drag-n-dropping a mesh from one scene to another, do you use any of the following:

- File -> Open on a scene that is NOT .lxo ?
- File -> Import on a scene that IS .lxo ?

Can you reproduce the bug on your project scene ? If not, roughly how often does it happen ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[John_Do]

Hello Vladimir,

Yes, I'm talking of this bug.

The vray.fixshadertree command works fine, thankfully ! But few others things are affected by this bug :

- render settings are resetted ( so the V-Ray config and the Resolution settings
- layer masks are duplicated and putted to the top of shader tree, outside of their material group. I have to manually put them in the material group to cancel the duplication and then re-parent them to the original layer

I didn't tried the both procedures you mentionned, but I'm pretty sure that could lead to the same result.

Yes I can reproduce the bug on infected scenes, but I can't reproduce it on simple test scenes, it occurs really randomly.

@BVA

Thank you for your feedback, I'm feeling less lonely !

So using only the preset system for imported stuff like materials and meshes lets to safely avoid this bug ?

[vladimir.nedev]

- render settings are resetted ( so the V-Ray config and the Resolution settings

I strongly suspect that a File -> Import on a .lxo scene can do this. You might be looking at the Render item imported from that other scene.
Also those additional environment items you were talking about initially, those also look like something done by importing a .lxo scene into another.

- layer masks are duplicated and putted to the top of shader tree, outside of their material group. I have to manually put them in the material group to cancel the duplication and then re-parent them to the original layer

This might be a bug in the vray.fixshadertree command. Can you send me a bugged scene (edit: with layer masks), so I can take a look and see if I can fix the vray.fixshadertree command for this case.
Basically it doesn't consider that a texture layer might be used as a mask, so decides to fix it by re-parenting to the Render item. Hopefully this can be avoided.

Thank you for your feedback, I'm feeling less lonely !

So using only the preset system for imported stuff like materials and meshes lets to safely avoid this bug ?

I think he was talking about Schematic nodes disappearing when you drag-n-drop a mesh from one scene to another, not everything below the Render item disappearing.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[John_Do]

I strongly suspect that a File -> Import on a .lxo scene can do this. You might be looking at the Render item imported from that other scene.
Also those additional environment items you were talking about initially, those also look like something done by importing a .lxo scene into another.

It seems logical but this time I have imported my meshes with a drag-n-drop in the Item List, not a File>Import command.

This might be a bug in the vray.fixshadertree command. Can you send me a bugged scene (edit: with layer masks), so I can take a look and see if I can fix the vray.fixshadertree command for this case.
Basically it doesn't consider that a texture layer might be used as a mask, so decides to fix it by re-parenting to the Render item. Hopefully this can be avoided.

Thank you, you can download it here.

I think he was talking about Schematic nodes disappearing when you drag-n-drop a mesh from one scene to another, not everything below the Render item disappearing.

Ha my bad, I also had difficult times with this particular feature

[vladimir.nedev]

Thank you, you can download it here.

I will need the scene in a state where the Render item is missing all its children.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[John_Do]

Sorry, here it is.

Link

[vladimir.nedev]

Sorry, I need to finish some stuff for our docs site, before I can take a look at fixing the vray.fixshadertree command for your scene.

In the meantime, can you be on the lookout for exactly when the scene gets corrupted.
You need to simplify it down to as few steps as possible.
Maybe list all the things that you are doing between opening the working scene and the moment you realize it has been corrupted.
It will be like trying to remember where you might have lost your keys

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev