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IN PROGRESS: Custom Materials Don't appear.

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RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
So I'm trying for hours now but whatever I try I can't get it to work where I have a set of smart materials that I want to create one Smart Material from so it can be applied to a range of different models in a set.

So when I click the "Save a Smart Material from the active layer or group" in this case it's a group it starts to "create" the different materials but when it ends and the 3Do material orb appears it's not textured and completely reflective (see attached image).

If I look in the Smart Materials Custom folder a .xml file is indeed made but it doesn't show anywhere.

So my question now: is there anything I can do to fix this problem as I have a set of models that all make use of the same style and a general smart material would really come in handy as it does exist out of 15 other smart materials.

Either way thanks in advance for any information or help you can provide me.

The XML file can be found here: http://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/dark_metal.xml
The PSD file can be found here: http://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/diffuse.7z (50MB)
Full Project file can be found here: http://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/akatoshdagger02.7z (71MB)

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  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    I applied the general bug fixing patch for 1.8 but the problem still exists.
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    Another update on my part, I noticed that the only thing preventing it to be in the custom library are the two images, if I create them manually in photoshop they appear and actually work as a Smart Material yet not completely as a lot of the masks are just completely white.

    Another thing is that when the 3DO viewer appears after the texture creation it does appear in my task manager that dDo has an alert window and is thinking but it just stays unresponsive while I can move inside the 3DO viewer which doesn't change even if I wait for +10 minutes.

    So my best guess is that it's waiting for the textures to be load upon the model in 3DO before it takes a picture/thumbnail and because it can't do that it freezes up and the smart material never gets finished with creating.
  • Synaesthesia
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    Synaesthesia polycounter
    I wonder if this is related to the issue with dDo Legacy wherein one needed to save two *.XML files in two different folder locations for Legacy to actually see the custom preset.
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    I wonder if this is related to the issue with dDo Legacy wherein one needed to save two *.XML files in two different folder locations for Legacy to actually see the custom preset.

    Well I noticed myself like mentioned in the above post that the custom materials don't appear because the image/thumbs aren't created. After making ones myself they do so why my quixel suite freezes up when the progress is almost finished I'm not sure about.

    I also completely removed the Quixel suite to see if it was because of an update error but this wasn't the case.
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    Okay so another update on my part, I suddenly got this error message (see attached files).

    Perhaps someone with more knowledge on these error codes could inform me if about it and perhaps enlighten me for a possible fix?
  • Victorcg
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    Victorcg polycounter lvl 11
    It seems like I have the same problem. But only when i try to save material from previously saved project.
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    Victorcg wrote: »
    It seems like I have the same problem. But only when i try to save material from previously saved project.

    Well I tried several times starting from scratch with different settings and materials, all resulting in the same problem.
  • Eric Ramberg
    Hi guys, sorry for being slow on the ball here.

    Rafael, Are you experiencing any other issues with The Suite? have you been able to save smart materials before? Could you post the layer stack of the material, so I can see how it is structured?

    A checklist for getting rid of general errors that might help you as well:

    - Run DDO and PS as admin
    - English PS
    - No non alphanumerical characters in the install path of The Suite or the project
    - Don´t keep source files on network drives
    - Make sure there is plenty of Diskspace left on C: and PS scratchdisks

    Any of these do anything for you?
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    Hi guys, sorry for being slow on the ball here.

    Rafael, Are you experiencing any other issues with The Suite? have you been able to save smart materials before? Could you post the layer stack of the material, so I can see how it is structured?

    A checklist for getting rid of general errors that might help you as well:

    - Run DDO and PS as admin
    - English PS
    - No non alphanumerical characters in the install path of The Suite or the project
    - Don´t keep source files on network drives
    - Make sure there is plenty of Diskspace left on C: and PS scratchdisks

    Any of these do anything for you?

    Thanks for replying, as an answer for the questions:

    I've always had problems with 3Do (youtube.com/watch?v=FfG2zU4ajiE this got solved in a way but other than that I do not experience any other problems as of yet.

    This is the first time I'm trying to make use of a self created smart material as I'm working on a project where the texture style needs to be consistent on various models so a smart material would be in this case very useful. So in short no this is the first time.

    You can find the PSD file (7zip) attached in the first post. I've tried various times in different ways to create the same structure with different layer and group settings and even just as a test with just a couple materials but all gave me the same result.

    Checklist:

    - Tried that didn't change
    - My Photoshop is indeed in English
    - The suite is installed in the default directory (C: \Users\Public\Quixel\SUITE\x64\bin\Release) the project was first placed on my desktop which did had an ë in it (C: \Users\Rafaël\Desktop\Projects) HOWEVER after reading up on it I tried to make a new project in D: \Projects yet still the same problem occurred).
    - I'm not on a network
    - I've got 200GB remaining on my SSD which I use as scratch disk.

    So yea I find it strange, if you require anything more of the project file then let me know, I'm happy to provide any information to get this problem solved!
  • Eric Ramberg
    Sorry I missed the project in the first post. I downloaded it and saved out a preset from the Metal group. It worked without any problems, it is however the most complex smart material I´ve seen to date! There are so many materials in there in different groups, 42 if Im not misstaken. It might be that your PS just runs out of memory. Have you tried saving just one layer as a smart material, just to see if its the sheer number of layers in the "Metal material" that is causing this issue.
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    Sorry I missed the project in the first post. I downloaded it and saved out a preset from the Metal group. It worked without any problems, it is however the most complex smart material I've seen to date! There are so many materials in there in different groups, 42 if I'm not mistaken. It might be that your PS just runs out of memory. Have you tried saving just one layer as a smart material, just to see if its the sheer number of layers in the "Metal material" that is causing this issue.

    Yep that's exactly what I've tried already, the (Black Metal) part has only 3 groups and I've also tried to do it with just one but the results keep the same.

    I've got 16GB of ram where I dedicate 13512 MB of RAM to Photoshop, so I'm not sure if that's the case.

    The strangest thing that I just find is that the XML is created but when the process wants to finish it up by taking the screenshot of the material it just freezes up as the 3DO viewer doesn't apply the materials. So I'm really not sure what's causing this as i've tried various things already (even reinstalling the whole thing and losing some of the old smart materials the suite had (heavy worn metal for example, not sure why this one was removed)).

    If I just add two custom images with the exact same size and the name then the custom material can be found in the smart material browser.

    However I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but all the test of the smart material it will only create a proper mask for the model around 1/4th of the time as if you would save the project file as smart material and then let it run on the exact same model you'll notice various layers will not have a mask at all. Is this normal?
  • Eric Ramberg
    So i think we might have a solution for this, the problem is most likely your name, (sorry)
    and the fact that the shared directory contain an unsupported character:
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    So i think we might have a solution for this, the problem is most likely your name, (sorry)
    and the fact that the shared directory contain an unsupported character:
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    Some more things I tried however all without any luck:

    - Installed older version of Photoshop CC (was using 2014)
    - Trying without any other plugins or programs running in the background
    - Changing the names and making sure all the paths don't have any special characters
    - re-installing the Quixel Suite

    Yet nothing works, it does create a proper XML that can be used when adding custom images but once the XML is created by quixel and the 3DO viewer pops open it just presents me with that shiny orb and then the suite freezes up.
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    Another problem I've gotten while trying to make a new smart material this time with a specular map and not only the diffuse.
  • Eric Ramberg
    This is very strange, but now your smart materials are correct except the fact that the tumbnail isn´t created? All the mask info in them is correct?
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    This is very strange, but now your smart materials are correct except the fact that the tumbnail isn´t created? All the mask info in them is correct?

    Looks like that yes, if I generate a new smart material of the project and then add the same custom smart material then the result is the same.

    I did however sometimes had flukes that some (one or two) of the materials used to create the overall smart material wouldn't be in the newly created (in this latest case the antique copper wouldn't be in it) however after re-saving the material everything was okay.

    Another thing is that while I made sure it was grouped that the material doesn't group the final materials together and just creates them ungrouped.

    I've done some more experimenting on different drives and install locations and folder locations but no luck yet.
  • Eric Ramberg
    Thanks for the report Rafael, and thank you so much for your extensive testing! I will look in to this with a Dev-person and see if we can figure this out! Sorry I don´t have an answer right away.
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    Thanks for the report Rafael, and thank you so much for your extensive testing! I will look into this with a Dev-person and see if we can figure this out! Sorry I don't have an answer right away.

    Not a problem, in case you need any more information that I can provide feel free to ask. If you want I could also provide you with details of Teamviewer usage so anyone your devs could test it directly on my computer in case that's something useful for you.
  • Eric Ramberg
    If you could PM with your skype-ID I can pass it on to a Dev-person! Thanks again!
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    If you could PM with your skype-ID I can pass it on to a Dev-person! Thanks again!

    You can find me by searching after: Rafa
  • RafaelDeJongh
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    RafaelDeJongh polycounter lvl 4
    So 4 months further, I've installed the latest updates made available and upgraded to Windows 10 however the same problems as described above are still present. I can't make any custom material even if it's as simple as a two layers.

    The XML does get created however incomplete and without the images.

    The same thing happens as to the Quixel Suite freezes after the previewer with the full chrome smart material model appears, and then I have to force stop it and restart to make it work again.

    I've made a quick video of the problem in question as no one of the Dev team contact nor even added me.

    [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy1BTLWZ7oA[/ame]

    That said as you can see some are working when I manually add the images 512 & 174 but if I just create a new one it just freezes and keeps thinking as mentioned in my previous posts.

    Hopefully this can be resolved sooner or later as it's quite annoying in bigger projects! My offer remains open in case anyone of the dev team wants to have a look at my PC via teamviewer or alike.
  • Eric Ramberg
    I think you're cursed. I've sent you a private message on how to solve this.
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