VertexPrimitive.mcx?

WsCG

Hello,

So, reinstalling Carrara fresh and encountering an error when it loads that I've never had on previous installs...

When I start the program, an Error prompt comes up saying "VertexPrimitive.mcx failed to load!".

I'm able to continue loading the program, but then am unable to create a vertex object. 

I've tried finding info about this error on Google, etc, but can find nothing about it. Is this a file that's supposed to be installed along with Carrara, etc? Not sure what to do to fix this.

Thanks

WsCG

Okay, so nevermind lol... I "fixed" it..

Had to restart the computer for an update, and it seems to work fine after that. So.. There ya go :p

Dartanbeck

You may have encountered a problem during install, or have accidentally deleted something (VertexPrimitive.mcx) in the Extensions folder, which is what that error is saying: The VertexPrimitive.mcx file is missing from the Extensions folder.

EDIT: or that VertexPrimitive.mcx requires something that it (Carrara) cannot find)

An easy way to fix this would be to reinstall Carrara - no need to uninstall first, just reinstall.

I'm lucky in that regard in that I always have Carrara installed on at least one other computer than the one I'm reinstalling on, so I can simply network over the missing file(s). But before that, I would always copy my entire Carrara installation directory to a backup drive. A bit redundant, but I have these extra drives laying around for just these reasons. In fact, I still have backups of my very first Carrara install plus all of my runtimes form back then. I could (should) probably delete that and free up some space... but I won't.

I've had the misfortune of having hard drives crash on me, so I try to replace them when I can. When I do that, I use the old one as a storage device. I have this cool litle box that can take either SATA or the old IDE drives and converts them to external USB, so I have a stck of old drives in those static-free bags they come in new. 

Anyway, if you're ever firing up Carrara and get one of those "Missing .mcx" messages - or even if it just hangs there and never finishes loading, chances are that there's something wrong in the Extensions folder. Please note that, even though some plugins will/can work if they reside in a subfolder, not all of them can/will.

One way that I use to fix this is to go into my extensions folder, create a new folder on my desktop, and select all of the aftermarket plugins I recognize in the Extensions folder and drag (move) them (all three files of the same name) into the new temp folder on my desktop. Then I try loading Carrara again. Most of the time it fires up immediately after I do this. If not, I start looking harder for more extensions. If Carrara does load up without error, I start adding the extensions back into the extesions folder one (all three files of the same name) at a time.

If I get an error while I have some of my extensions pulled out, like VertexPrimitive.mcx, I know to find that extension (again, all three files of the same name) and put it back into the Extensions folder and try again.

The last time this happened to me, I had added some of the new plugins into subfolders. Since some of those plugins have their own subfolders, Carrara didn't like that at all, but would still load after a long wait (finding the proper files). After I took them all out of subfolders and dropped them directly into the Extensions folder, the issue disappeared.

We don't need the extra subfolders anyway. It's easy to find each extension directly within the main folder.