Carrara hang up - during untriangulate after decimation

DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125
edited August 2016 in Carrara Discussion

I had a model that I didn't need as much detail. The original mesh had between 15,000 and 20,000 polygons.  It was going to be in the background.  Multiple instances.  Planning to apply DOF anyway.  Lots of reasons to think it woul be a good idea to reduce polygon count if I could retain the general shape. In the vertex room, I selected all, then decimated.  It resulted in a lot of triangles (didn't know it would do that).  I then selected all and untriangulated.  Carrara has not locked up, it is hung up.  When I look at task manager, Carrara is still calculating.  It has been about 20 minutes.  Should I give up and use task manager to close Carrara?  I don't recall trying to reduce resolution before so don't know what to expect or if decimate was the wrong tool.  

Post edited by Diomede on

Comments

  • cdordonicdordoni Posts: 583
    edited August 2016

    Unfortunately decimation in most applications won't produce quads. Then the resulting mesh is to irregular for untriangulate to work. It possible to retopologize and produce quads with a lower polycount in another app though. Give instant meshes a try https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes

    I have used instant meshes several times now. It is easy to use ... the automatically generated flow is pretty good for the meshes I have used. It is possible to redirect the flow if desired by drawing guides on the mesh, but have not tried that yet.

    Definitely play with the settings. I have occasionally found some artifacts which kind of look like chips missing from sharp edges. Sometimes these can be fixed by increasing the resolution.

    It would be worth paying for if the price was reasonable

    Post edited by cdordoni on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125

    Thank you.  Will give it a try.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326

    Otherwise, I don't think that Carrara has issues with triangles, did you try rendering it in triagulated form? Decimator for DS actually has the user consciously triangulate the mesh prior to decimation. It's never intended that the mesh then become untriangulated in the end.

    Many of Carrara's other modelers create triangle meshes - Text, Terrain... and they render beautifully. ;)

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    If your first reaction is "Damn, shoulda saved that first", then wait it out. Carrara can be very slow at some processes, but it ususlly gets there in the end (I've wasted waited a couple of hours on a big convert to vertex modeller, for example). If you have it saved, kill it and restart: life's too short to sit around waiting for something you might well throw away anyway.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125
    edited August 2016

    Really appreciate the feedback.  In the end, because the whole point was that this was not an important enough object to have so much detail, I just stopped the calculations and replaced the object with something simpler.  However, your replies will be helpful the next time I want to simplify something.

    Post edited by Diomede on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326

    If your first reaction is "Damn, shoulda saved that first", then wait it out. Carrara can be very slow at some processes, but it ususlly gets there in the end (I've wasted waited a couple of hours on a big convert to vertex modeller, for example). If you have it saved, kill it and restart: life's too short to sit around waiting for something you might well throw away anyway.

    Right. And sometimes it can even seem to help if we open some other app or window and do something. I often do that if C hangs... seems to get it to snap back awake again. Can't remember who mentioned that to me back when I first started, but it seems to be fairly efective.

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