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Ernest Burden
02-25-2010, 02:46 PM
I linked up a bunch of user data to control colors and gradients and values within material channels. Since I did these one at a time, I ended up with a long string of expression icons. I went through them and did a copy/paste into a master expression. But now the expressions do not work. Why did they break?

The structure is this:

Null-"MatHolder" master expression-icon
--Null-"expression" expression-icon expression-icon expression-icon etc.
--Null-"expression" expression-icon expression-icon expression-icon etc.

I opened each single expression, selected all, copy, then went up to the 'master' one and pasted in. No other changes made. The use data is connected to the top null "MatHolder" When I select MatHolder, I still see my user data fields as before, they just don't work now.

What did I do wrong?
mark render
02-25-2010, 02:54 PM
when all link-fields and connections are linked correctly, there should be no problem. but its hard to say without seeing the scene.
LucentDreams
02-25-2010, 03:05 PM
perhaps they were using relative links instead of absolute ones?
Ernest Burden
02-25-2010, 03:35 PM
perhaps they were using relative links instead of absolute ones?

Perhaps. How would I know? This was my first venture into user data. The results are fairly complicated and quite useful.

The expressions were created for the top Null, I had just moved the entire herd to sub Nulls for neatness. And they worked. Now that I've copied them back up to the top Null, they don't.
Ernest Burden
02-25-2010, 03:38 PM
perhaps they were using relative links instead of absolute ones?

AH, I see how to tell. OK, the links are Absolute Reference
LucentDreams
02-25-2010, 04:03 PM
hmm hard to say what is going on then you could send it to support to have a look if you need, but does sound like you have it working.
Ernest Burden
02-25-2010, 04:22 PM
hmm hard to say what is going on then you could send it to support to have a look if you need, but does sound like you have it working.

I do not have it working. The old version, with several dozen little expressions works, but not the one where I pasted them into another expression. I'll poke at it a bit more.
MJV
02-25-2010, 04:35 PM
An expression will not work if even one of the links is bad. This can easily happen by accident if for example if you try to undo/redo connections. When copying expressions to a master, you should check as you go to make sure things are working as planned.
Ernest Burden
02-25-2010, 04:58 PM
An expression will not work if even one of the links is bad.

Oh. That might explain what's happening. I do not know if anything is now 'bad', but it certainly could be. Thank you.
Ernest Burden
02-25-2010, 06:04 PM
I do not know if anything is now 'bad', but it certainly could be.

And that wasn't too hard to find, either. Some of the expressions ended with 'object undefined'. I deleted just those, and things work again.
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