Not My Type Error

BrianP21361

I have a large (2.15 GB) Carrara file with 10 V4 characteris in it. Today I tried to open it and got this error, "A not my type error occuered while executing Open..." I'm assuming the file has been damaged.  I'm on a Mac using OSX 10.11.6. I tried to open the file with Carrara 7.2, 8.5.1.19 and 8.5 without any luck. Does anyone have any ideas on how I might be able to recover the file?

BrianP21361

Is this the dreaded 2 MB file limit bug I've heard about on the forums?

Stezza

bugger!

did you originally save the file compressed?

if so then maybe you can rename the file with a zip extension from car then extract the file from the zip and try to open that... 

eg. myfile.car to myfile.zip

works sometimes on a PC dunno 'bout macs though.

Dartanbeck

Sorry for the lack of response. I just have no clue how to help.

There was talk about this stuff before though, but I don't recall - nor am I familiar with a 2MB limit. I have huge files and small ones.

One thing might be RAM running low. My Win 10 laptop really suffers from low RAM as the updates continue. My Win 7 laptop had the same amount of RAM and didn't have nearly the issues this one does.

Anyways, having many figures in the same scene can gather an enormous amount of RAM due to figures all going for higher resolution maps - and plenty of them.

To minimize this effect, I'll often make a new folder within  the original texture folder called "LR" and make copies of each map which are half resolution or so. I like to use these lower res texture maps for characters that never really come that close to the camera.

Also making sure to optimize shaders and consolidate them makes a HUGE difference - especially if the original high rez maps are used.

Another thing that I "ALWAYS" do is to save each figure individually in the browser - optimized for Carrara. So if I lose a file like this (which never seems to happen to me) I can easily reconstruct it. I save the scenes empty except for its environmental lighting too, so everything is actually saved individually before I ever join them together into one scene. It makes for a wonderfully creative pipeline and it also keeps me familiar with all of my content, since I'm always optimizing it for Carrara and saving it off to my browser.

Anyways, one thing you may want to try is to close everything on your computer - even give it a good ol' restart - then try loading in the scene with nothing else running.

If it opens up, the first thing to do is Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders!

BrianP21361

Thanks for the respnses.

The file was never compressed. I never use compression on Carrara files. Hard drive space is cheap these days. 

I don't think it's a RAM issue I have 16 GB and moving around around the scene was was responsive. I can reproduce the file. I always create characters invidiually and then bring them together when I need them. This was kind of an experiment to see how many I could get into a single file without issues. I also tried restarting and opening the scene by itself. I tried double clicking the file and also opening from within Carrara and got the same error. 

I always select Edit>Remove Unused Master>Consolidate Duplicate Shaders after reading about it here. It really helps. 

All good suggestions, but none worked so far. Thank you for responding. As I said it's not a big deal to recreate the file, but I would like to figure out what went wrong so it doesn't happen again. 

 

Dartanbeck

These are Predatron's Lorenzo and Loretta LoRez models - even the children (they come with a crap load of morphs to make them anything from kids to zombies, orcs, elves and dwarves!)

There are something like eight to ten physical figures, the rest are replicated according to a map.

I always use compression and this file opens without error

These are all separate figures - only eight, but it loads nicely.

porthos62

Sadly I too have had this error, I thought it was a Genesis 2 issue as I had several chracters in my scene but it happens with V4's as well.

RAM not an issue as I have 32gb on my iMac, never compress files and now try to keep my file limit below 2gb.

Datanbeck's work flow seems like the best approach, at least the scene can be rebuilt that way and consolidating shaders does help.

I've learnt that while workiing on a large scene its best to leave Carrara running and do all the renderins I need until I 'have' to close the file. Then I keep my fingers crossed when I re-open !!

Sorry, can't give any any suggestions. :-(

 

3DAGE

Multipass rendering

there's a lot of reasons to use post production techniques to create compositions with armies of figures,.rather than trying to work with multiple figures in a scene.

Also, bear in mind that a figure's "Clothing" can have a higher poly level than the figure.  (clothing is also a figure, since it has bones and weightmapping)

so,.. ten dressed V4's,.. is actually 20 figures minimum.

but perhaps I'm wrong, and you should be able to load as much as you like, and work without any issues or system slowdowns.

probably not .

On low poly versions,. naturally,. that makes sense,. as does using multipass. and using lower proxy's,

V4 has LOD versions,.  (proxy lower detail meshes which are automagically changed,.. depending on the distance from the camera)  (1k, 2k, 4k, 17k)

Are you using those ?

Rebuilding your scene (as it was) is likely to produce the same outcome. so don't do that,. learn from it.

it's unlikely that all of the figures in your scene are interacting with each other at the same time,. so you don't need them all at the same time.

Work with what you really need to,. not,.. as much as you can manage to load into your system .

Hope it helps :)

 

 

BrianP21361

3Dage,

It makes a lot of sense. It was motre of an experiment than an actual render so I really didn't lose anything. I was surprosed how many figures I could get into one scene without having problems. I expected a crash, but never got one. I agree with you about compositing renders with fewer figures. The only issue I have is with figures casting shadows on each other. How do you handle those in post?

Dartanbeck

Compositing is also very fun to plan out and perform. It's fun to do it right in Carrara, too, and then we should still have the individual plates to use in post, should we need to.

Compositing directly in Carrara has a benefit of using the same actual camera(s), lighting, reflection materials, etc., within the scene - beyond the benefit of it all ending up the same quality/grade and so on.

Also, compositing can make our renders SO FAST!!! 

Set up a scene, turn a bunch of it invisible and render. Load that render into the Backdrop, make a few things visible while making everything in the first render invisible, render again - rinse and repeat.

Doing all of this outside of Carrara has the HUGE benefit of all of the control we get on each render - and in the case of Fusion, HitFilm, pretty much any compositor, we can see our results in real time - like adding some blur to all or parts of one layer (one render) as well as enhancing various elements, colors, etc.,

Many compositors like Fusion and HitFilm Pro also have particle systems that work pretty much in real time - or can be cached to become real time - adding a lot of power to the end result.

That's the sort of stuff I'm studying hard on now - compositing.

All of that said, I'm still amazed at how much I can cram into a single scene and still render in about a minute or two per frame. That's Carrara Magic! I haven't been able to find anything even close in Poser or Daz Studio.

3DAGE

Hi Brian :)

Carrara has some great abilities to handle multiple objects,.  you can create hundreds or thousands of trees with leaves, or blades of grass,.

using replicators to create hundreds or thousands of dressed figures is the best way to go,.

you can actually replicate a small group of figures,. lets say 10 ,. then Group those together,. and add that group to a surface replicator to replicate that group of ten figures over miles of terrain.

The only issue I have is with figures casting shadows on each other. How do you handle those in post?

Shadowcatcher,.  and a shadow layer pass

that's the key,. and it doesn't have to be on the ground plane,. you can select a figure, and set the shaders to shadowcatcher for the whole thing

, buildings rocks or anything else can have shadowcatcher applied.

this is an old example from C6,. using 3 figures (david5),. in a group,. added to a replicator to create a legion of soldiers ,. then added to another replicator to create Multiple legions.

different versions of an NLA marching walk animation,. were used to offset the figure strides.

BrianP21361

3DAge,

 

Thanks. I didn't know you could use shadowcasters to figures. I'm going to have to get a little smarter with shadow layer pass.

Here's the image I was working on when the file was corrupted. 

3DAGE

For post shadows on images like that,., have a look at alienskin.com,.  " Eyecandy 7 ",. it includes a great shadow effect, very controllable and editable for adding shadows from object not originally in an image,. so you could render each figure as a single image,. with alpha,.. makes compositing easier.  then arrange the image layers in your photo editor or video compositor,. and add shadows were you want.

Using multiple layers in an image editor,. gives you more control over the final composition,. as you can move, scale, flip, and rotate the figures and arrange the layers in different ways, to create your final composition. you can also add filters or effects to layers to create DOF blur, or add other photo effects. 

in some compositing tools you can also add light's,. which can cast shadows using the image alpha, or a BW mask layer. or the alpha from a different layer.

Images:

1./ Eyecandy shadow options :

2./ Photoshop composite example :,. ( image duplicated, flipped, scaled, blurred with shadows)

hopefuly you can see the shadow on the middle figure, cast by the figure on the right,. and the ground shadows from all three,.

all added using Eyecandy.

 

MarkIsSleepy

Heh - "Not My Type Error."  I thought this was going to be a dating thread. 

 

BrianP21361 said:

3DAge,

 

Thanks. I didn't know you could use shadowcasters to figures. I'm going to have to get a little smarter with shadow layer pass.

Here's the image I was working on when the file was corrupted. 

 

Cool Marvel heroes image - although unless Marvel has done some major revision in the past few years, She-Hulk should be a bit taller; she's about 6'7" in her hulk form.   

BrianP21361

3DAGE said:

For post shadows on images like that,., have a look at alienskin.com,.  " Eyecandy 7 ",. it includes a great shadow effect, very controllable and editable for adding shadows from object not originally in an image,. so you could render each figure as a single image,. with alpha,.. makes compositing easier.  then arrange the image layers in your photo editor or video compositor,. and add shadows were you want.

Using multiple layers in an image editor,. gives you more control over the final composition,. as you can move, scale, flip, and rotate the figures and arrange the layers in different ways, to create your final composition. you can also add filters or effects to layers to create DOF blur, or add other photo effects. 

in some compositing tools you can also add light's,. which can cast shadows using the image alpha, or a BW mask layer. or the alpha from a different layer.

Images:

1./ Eyecandy shadow options :

2./ Photoshop composite example :,. ( image duplicated, flipped, scaled, blurred with shadows)

hopefuly you can see the shadow on the middle figure, cast by the figure on the right,. and the ground shadows from all three,.

all added using Eyecandy.

 

I've got to try that. It looks like a huge time saver and I'll avoid the error!

WendyLuvsCatz

I was getting that error doing notepad hacks saving as unicode instead of ascii in notepad