Does 9.6 crash a lot or is it me?

[philstopford]

It's been stable here for me, but you don't give very many specifics in terms of hardware/software setup and whether a particular sequence gives a reproducible crash (so that others can try it out), so it is difficult to provide meaningful assistance.

[SheepFactory]

Well it crashes randomly as you import objects, move something, etc. It is not one thing that crashes it.

System is a first gen mac book pro.

[erikals]

i have had some random crashes too,
mostly modeler

strange, as it seems to have good days, bad days

i wonder if it can be either a hub issue or a 32bit / 64bit issue.

-What are some good workflow habits to have in lightwave, especially in layout.
um... i tend to use a second camera instead of using the perspective view as panoramaing is easier that way.

make a shortcut for 'save all objects'

when clicking Alt+F10, choose studio mode instead of default (better layout)
(NT must have forgotten to change it)

DPont's plugins are a must

adding some sort of pose saver plugin might be an idea if your doing CA

...and check my signature for tutorials

[erikals]

personal note, i guess you are familiar with Maya vs LW character animation?

you seem to be a good Maya rigger so if you are comfortable with that you might consider keep doing that...

LW does have some nice new CA tools though, some better than Maya, but beware of the pitfalls. :)

[Cageman]

LW is pretty stable over here. I don't own a Mac, so I can't speak for those. Unfortunately, trackball rotation is the only rotation avaliable in Modeler and there is no way to change it to behave like Maya. However, in Layout, there is no trackball rotation at all, so you should feel more at home in Layout.

Regarding workflows, I would say that it depends on what you want to do. If you could give a list of things that you want to do, I think it would be easier to explain.

If you are already familiar with other tools, such as Maya, I think that LW may come off as odd, unintuitive and very limiting, but once you "get it", you'll start to apprichiate some of the finer parts of LW. The whole vertex maps implementation is very well thought out and can be used in various ways, especially now with Nodal for surfacing and displacements (and motion if you get DP Node Item Motion, PC only though ;( ).

I use LW in conjunction with Maya and MotionBuilder at work, and there are things with LW that I simply can't live without, but alas, it took me quite a while to "get" LW back in the days... but it is worth it, especially if you already have an app like Maya.

[SheepFactory]

Thanks for the help guys.

I am going to be using it for layout\previz work.

[philstopford]

I honestly cannot say I've seen a problem with loading scenes or objects, or adding objects to scenes. It's been pretty solid here.

The main issue, for me, with 9.6 is the limitation on both FBX and DAE export/import. It causes serious issues going between apps (and PointOven doesn't provide morph support for Maya, either). Morph shapes are not supported at all, and UVs get broken under FBX. The only reliable workaround in my experience has been to find someone with a Modo license (301 works better than 302 - no idea about 401).

Hopefully NewTek will fix this with an update to 9.6.

[SheepFactory]

A quick question:

Why cant I undo the graph editor\dopesheet actions? is there a seperate undo key for them that I dont know about?

[philstopford]

A quick question:

Why cant I undo the graph editor\dopesheet actions? is there a seperate undo key for them that I dont know about?

Due to the way that LW was originally 'designed', there is no concept of a universal undo buffer. LW Core will address this, but the level of effort and disruption needed to bring this to the LW codebase was too great, and likely to break everything. So....those components that support 'undo' have their own buffers. That includes the Graph Editor, Nodal, etc. Some lack an undo entirely (such as the lighting system).

It's a quirk. Saving often is the usual 'workaround'

[SheepFactory]

Wow... Now that blows my mind. :sad:


I have also realized ctrl + z works as a single undo in graph editor but not in dope sheet. I have access to some sort of right click > undo in the dopesheet if the selection is still highlighted, if it's not, it seems you are out of luck.

[Cageman]

Wow... Now that blows my mind. :sad:


I have also realized ctrl + z works as a single undo in graph editor but not in dope sheet. I have access to some sort of right click > undo in the dopesheet if the selection is still highlighted, if it's not, it seems you are out of luck.

Yeah... that is one of the weird concepts of LightWave as a package. The funny thing is, I seldom or never have to use Undo in LW (or feel that I would need it), but I use it all the time in Maya. The only time I may use Undo in LW is inside Nodal or when working with keyframes (that is, when working directly on the timeline or DopeTrack). You should try working with DopeTrack instead of DopeSheet (multiselect your items and use the DopeTrack). Now, one thing to remember with DopeTrack is that if you change item or select multiple items, you need to do a frame-step or drag the timeline for DopeTrack to update. The selection and manipulation of keyframes are very straight forward.

The first screenshot shows where to click to bring up/down dopetrack. When howering over those dotts, the mouse should change icon.

EDIT:

*doh* I thought that DopeTrack was operating on the same undo-stack as normal keyframe manipulation, but it seems it doesn't... Oh well.. :) At least you now know of an alternative to DopeSheet. :D

[lhermittem]

I had for a while both lw 9.5 and 9.6 installed on the same machine and, yes, 9.5 was more stable. LW9.6 crashes scenes that would'nt in 9.5 plus the modeler let me down several times a day. This is not the most unstable 3D app I tried, It's pretty stable most of the time but 9.6 does crash more than 9.5.

[SheepFactory]

I think its something on the mac side. At work 9.6 is pretty rock solid on a pc.

[WyattHarris]

I use the PC version and don't usually have any random crashes. What I do get are crashes that I can replicate pretty easily. Seems lately they have mostly been in the node editor working with materials. FPrime freaks out on some materials.

[Carm3D]

Mirroring geometry in Modeler seems to precipitate a crash frequently for me. Oh yeah, and importing models of other formats.

[Limbus]

Hi guys,

I am messing with the trial version of 9.6 here (osx) and it crashes every 5 minutes. I am wondering if its the software or my computer. Nothing else I use has any problem or crashes of this frequency.

9.6 does run less stable on the Mac than on windows here but I don't get crashes every 5 minutes either. I now try to use it as little as possible on the Mac since it is very stable on Windows.


-Is there a way to disable the trackball viewport rotation behaviour on the perspective view like you can in modo?

None that I know of.


-What are some good workflow habits to have in lightwave, especially in layout.

- Organize everything by parenting it to nulls. Some people even use extra nulls for translating, rotating and scaling objects.
- use the schematic view for selecting items fast (shortcut 7 on the keypad to assign it to a viewport)
- Set the viewport to light or camera view to adjust those. (you don't get trackball rotation when viewing the scene thru the cam so you will never change the bank value by accident. use RMB to bank)
- assign a shortcut to "save incremental". This will add "v001" to the scene name and increase the counter every time.
- read the manual section about the graph editor. There is much good stuff to know in there.
- save early, save often, save incremental ;-)


Why cant I undo the graph editor\dopesheet actions? is there a seperate undo key for them that I dont know about?

Guess this is answered. After a while you will get used to not having a proper undo. Besides saving often and incremental it is a good idea to turn autokey off and setting keys manual with the RETURN key.

Cheers, Florian

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