Decimation Master Pre-Process Issues
polycounter lvl 9
I've gotten to the point in sculpting this rock formation where I want to decimate it and bake it so I can see how it looks in UDK. When I Pre-Process the model though ZBrush freezes. I thought maybe it would just take about 20 minutes or so but the sculpt is about 1.5 Million Tris and I'm using an i7 920 so I doubt it would take that long. Does anyone have any idea why it would freeze when pre-processing?
Replies
Thanks. If I don't find a solution to this by tomorrow I'll give that a try.
I don't think I did. How do I do that?
Tool - Geometry - Del Lower
I'm going to try reinstalling ZBrush today to see if something just didn't install correctly. Not sure what else could be causing the problem. Keep the suggestions coming if you have them though please!
@couto, I tried it both running in the background and always keeping it up. I left it up without clicking on anything for about 15-20 minutes once and still nothing. It's definitely just crashing the program right when it starts.
I tried decimating on the computers at Futurepoly and it worked perfectly on the first try. It stayed on "Computing..." for about 2 or 3 seconds at most there while mine just freezes on that. My computer is much more powerful than the computers at Futurepoly too so it definitely should be taking longer at all on my computer.
Once that is done, install it back.
Also, check on bad RAM. ZB is extremely frisky when it comes to RAM. An underclocked slot or a slightly bad sector RAM could be fatal to it.
@Ace, it's the same mesh at FP and on my computer. The mesh isn't the problem though. I've tried decimating an 8,000 polygon sphere on my computer and it still freezes at the same spot. I've also tried reinstalling ZBrush and Decimation Master and it didn't fix it. I'll try deleting anything related to Pixologic in the Apps section. I didn't think of trying that and I'm guessing that stuff stayed when I uninstalled. I'll also check for bad RAM. I've been starting to think it's probably a hardware problem. Do you have any suggestions or links to something that can tell me how to check my RAM? Never done it before.
RAM - 6GB of Corsair XMS3 1600 MHZ
Video Card - ATI 1GB 5870
OS - Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Nothing is overclocked, it's all on stock settings. I recently moved from California to Bellevue, WA in a bumpy moving truck so maybe one of the sticks of RAM got a bit de-seated during that. It's still reading as 6 gigs though and everything else has worked fine.
@$!nz, Yup, I've tried Process All.
As to testing memory, I recommend using Memtest86. You'll probably want to let it run overnight so it gets at least a few passes in. That said, this sounds more likely to be a processor issue to me if it's hardware.
I've done that before and it still doesn't work. I'll keep that in mind for when I actually get this working though. Didn't know what it did before. Thanks.
Hope It works, let us know, also if you found a better way to go about decimating post It for someone who might run into this issue down the road.
Just came to mind...
Reinstall or re-download the decimate master plugin? I know you reinstalled but you might have just used the saved files from the machine?
Also this guy seems to have the same problem as you unless this is you:
pixol forums maybe ask him how he fixed his?
click "make polymesh 3d" before you decimate
also make sure you are using the correct decimation options (decimate current / decimate all are designed for specific things and might not work if you use them on the wrong type of selection)
EDIT:
@$!nz, I just tried the OBJ exporting/importing thing. Didn't work. I'm guessing this is more of a hardware issue that tricks like this won't fix.
EDIT: Not sure that guy on Pixologic's forum is having quite the same problem as in his other posts he mentions it actually crashing and generating the temp files, but he did say a reformat/OS reinstall fixed his.
That single post by Shakey1 was the one I was talking about who seems to have the same problem, not that entire thread. Doesn't seem like he ever found a solution though. If this doesn't get fixed by the time I move back to California then I think I'll try reformatting. I haven't reformatted this PC since I built it a bit over a year ago so it could use it probably.
I know we've thrown a lot of suggestions at you, but I do want to revisit one. Did you ever try another uninstall/cleaning with CCleaner and making sure all Pixologic files are gone? I think it was Ace who suggested that one, but if a reformat did help the other guy it might have been because there was a bad setting in some esoteric preferences file or the like.
Ah I actually didn't try that yet. I'll do that in a few minutes.
Nope. I might try making sure everything is seated properly later. Doubt it will do anything since everything else has been working 100% fine but it's worth a try.
Out of curiousity, and because if I don't ask it'll be the case, did you happen to buy the processor in March 2010 from Newegg? They apparently sent out about 300 counterfeit versions of that processor then, and while I would like to think they would have contacted everyone who might have been impacted, you never know.
@Iconoplast, I bought it around January or early February of 2010. I doubt it's a counterfeit though, but I don't know anything about that kind of stuff.
All in all, with it not having ever worked on that computer and consistently not working with different meshes, I'm going to say it's almost certainly some sort of hardware issue.
I did just watch Decimation Master run in Process Explorer on my system and a thought occured to me. Does yours ever even start it? It does actually run under a separate .exe (decimationmasterapp64.exe if you're using the 64 bit version of it).
EDIT: Are you running Zbrush as an administrator? I don't know if it's allowed to launch another .exe if you aren't.