The Amazing Disappearing Hypervoxels

[FreeRadical]

So I'm still working on this particle creature, and something bizzare has happened. At some point, I opened up the scene and something screwy happened...and now it's permanent. I have a Sprite-mode HV applied to the creature-emitter, yet, in the HV master panel, NO objects are activated, meaning I can't access the params for HV Drawing. And under the Item Properties, there isn't even an HVDrawing custom object attached. Yet everything still renders fine...that's the bizzare part; everything renders like the HV's were working perfectly, and it looks good, but I want to CHANGE it. When I try to Activate the creature-emitter, a new HV turns on with the default Surface-mode stuff. The HV's have disappeared! Thanks to anyone who can offer some insight.

[HowardM]

so save out your HV preset...reset the emitter and apply the preset!
:)

[FreeRadical]

No no...you don't understand. As far as LightWave is concerned, there IS no HV to save to a preset. I've tried to do that, but I can't ever actually FIND anything to save. The effect renders, but it's like...besides rendering, it doesn't exist. The HyperVoxel panel tells me that no objects are active with HV's, and so therefore I can't save anything to a preset. Very bizzare.

[Flat]

Interesting.
sounds like a goofiness in the scene. Open it in a text editor and check for these plugins :

Plugin MasterHandler 1 .HyperVoxels
EndPlugin

This one should be right at the top of the scene file. The HV Objects should have

Plugin CustomObjHandler 2 HyperVoxelsDrawing
EndPlugin

and at the end you should see

Plugin VolumetricHandler 1 HyperVoxelsFilter
{ HyperVoxelData
HVFlags 2 0 1 1
HVBlendingGroups 0
....
}
EndPlugin


If these aren't in the scene and HV still render... Well either you're hallucinating, or you're looking at the wrong scene.
:p

Phil :confused:

[HowardM]

did that help?
if not, are you saying you cant render a VIPER preview?
because you should then be able to save preset, not the the HV txt file, but make an actual thumbnail of its settings in your preview tray....

[FreeRadical]

I've thought about that. Here's the thing...once I bring up the HV main panel and then open VIPER, the thing renders fine, even though nothing's activated, like I've said. I know about saving with the preview thumb and whatnot...but see...in order to do that, you have to have an object highlighted. The second I highlight something and turn it on, it creates the default gray surface HV's...and if I don't activate it, then I can't save it as a preset...it just does nothing.

However, I haven't tried doing that text editor thing...that seems like a good idea...I'll let somebody know what happens with that when I do it.

[kakafroon]

Try renaming your emmiter or hv object and reactivating it, then copy the settings back to the objects and resave the scene. Seemed to fix a similar problem i've had in one of my scenes.

Hope it helps.

[FreeRadical]

Yeah well...trouble is, I don't have any settings to copy back to the renamed object. That's the whole problem here, really. I've tried to create new objects or stand-ins or whatever for temporary adjustment...but I have no way of copying the HV settings from one object to another because, as far as LW seems to show me, there AREN'T any HV settings. None that I can reach, anyway. I can't even copy the HVDraw custom object with any success. I mean I can, but it doesn't contain any parameters but the default surface bubble things.

[kevman3d]

Interesting - I've seen a similiar bug myself with HV's - Instead, 'HyperVoxels 3.0' would disappear from the Volumetrics tab, and trying to re-add it just caused a message that I can only have one instance of HV running...

However, it wasn't persistant so I guessed it was just a 'glitch'.

Have you tried deleting your config files for LightWave? You might find something has barfed and you just need to reinitialise the configs, readd the plugins, etc...

Give that a try - It sounds like it could be the problem.

[FreeRadical]

I'll look into that, I don't think I've tried it yet. But then, right now I've kinda got my hands tied because I've been working on this project at school, where I had a lovely school-funded copy of LW 7.5. I have 6.5b at my house. So...it may be a little while.