the mystery of the disappearing mesh

[womanonfire]

i see by the hypergraph of the file where i lost it that all that is left of it is tripleSwitch info from when i was using the 3d paint tool on it.

but in the backup file i see much much more... the node i deleted is still there, only the model is gone. there is all this spaghetti like the history of the object is still there. the node called polySurfaceShape16(mesh) is floating around not connected to anything... could this be the lost geometry?

[TheWraith]

try selecting the geometry thats disappeared either in outliner or hypergraph or whichever and export the object as an obj and then reimport it. if it's a booleaned object then perhaps you did a bad boolean (you boolean ppl out there know wut i'm talkin' about) but i don't think the import export trick works on that. anyways, give that a try and if it still doesn't fix it lemme know.

[womanonfire]

thank you for that suggestion. it did not work however.
heres what i see:

http://entropy8.com/live/errrr.jpg

the thing circled and what it looks like in the hypershade... if i could just get the UV information out of that it would be great.

there is the screenShape(mesh) - whatever that is.
and a bunch of things hanging off it to with with history i suppose.

the items underlined are what i think i deleted in another file that made the geometry disappear. this is the back up file where it is also gone, even though i never saved the messed up file.

i just don't know much about the guts of Maya to decipher what has happened. time to learn i guess....

[womanonfire]

oh yeah, and No booleans were used in the making of that model.

[Waboflex]

I've seen something like this a few times, if you've got a version with history you *might* be able to recover it. You basically have to delete the history nodes one by one, most recent first, and if you're lucky the model will just pop back in when the offending node is deleted. The last time I saw this it was just a poly split node that was causing trouble, though it wasn't the most recent history item, more like four or five operations back.

You can delete the nodes in the attribute editor or outliner with 'show DAG objects only' unchecked, and other ways too... of course you lose any of those tweaks, but that can be a small price to pay to get the bulk of your work back.

Good luck.

Wabo.

[womanonfire]

http://entropy8.com/live/errrr2.jpg

DraRo_Screen in the hypershade.
what is polySurfaceShape16(mesh) ?
it is in a lighter grey than the rest, could this mean that there is really nothing there?

[teewsandy]

That would be the base of the geometry. Usually if an item in the hypergraph is a lighter gray then it means it could be hidden. Select the object in the outliner and then go to show selected. I don't know with polygons too much but with nurbs if you intersect surfaces (similiar to boolean) if there is not enough information then it disappears. What I mean by that is tesselation. Maybe also try raising the polygon count on that surface slightly.

[ktpr]

i've been learning mel even though I'm a newbie and would rather be making art ... I have several ideas.

1. Select the obj int eh outliner. Hit ctrl-a to bring up the attribute editor. Go to your shape tab. Under compoent display make sure geometry is on.

2. See ifyou can select both your poly shape node and your uv set (not sure if you can really do that) and try to connect them (mmb over the other or open up the connection editer and do it that way.

3. Select the entire graph of the scene and go Graph->rebuild

4. select your mesh in the outliner and assign new material to it (it might show up?).

cheers
ktpr

[sigma]

Ive had the same problem but only a couple times. They all happened during modeling or texturing for at least 3 hours, no restarts no reboots. All of a sudden my entire scene would empty yet all the nodes are still visible in the outliner/hypergraph. Sometimes hitting undo will bring the scene back but most of the time Id have to revert to a previous save. And dont try saving it looking all empty, it will open that way.

I think its a memory issue, I really have no idea. It happens very rarely but it still freaks me out. Im running a 2.4 P4 and 1024 Rambus.

[Levitateme]

hi there, i just wanted to say i had the same problem in early versions of maya. no reason my objects would just vanish. im on maya 5 now it hasnt happend once, on 4.5 i dont remember t happening either. before them versions i DO know it happend sometimes. i would do like jazzbot said select it in the outliner, export it and import. i did that a few times and it worked. i also left that scene hence it was possesed. i imported in a new scene im ignorant...maybe, but it worked sorry i cant help besides tell you i had it happen and its ...

btw my friend saves his progress as he goes along, he may finish like a foot and save taht as like animal_1 and later by the time he is done he ends up with something like animal _86

not that extreme but if it happens alot i would try somethig like that if you want, go ahead i give you permission.

[sigma]

I think it might be a problem with the camera. Check the Cameras Translate channels, they might be set to extremly high values. Set them back to zero if they are.

[womanonfire]

thats not what happened. but thx for the suggestion. i just made the model over again. thats life.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.