Lines and Edges Flicker / Disappear
DarkSide Projects
Posts: 25
Hi,
I am just curious, is it normal for the edges of primitives to flicker or disappear while modelling or rotating around the object?
I seem to be getting an ugly effect when rotating. The entire edge seems to break apart and become distorted. The edge itself is fine, it just appears broken with certain parts disappearing, but then when i rotate to a different angle the lines reappear and disappear again at random positions at random.
This suggests a major bug which i cant believe is allowed to exist in a program where visuals are everything.
Also the edge tools. When using extract along, at times the line will simply vanish and then reappear at a different position. What?
This makes it nigh impossible to work accurately.
Its becoming nearly impossible to do anything as i have to guess where the lines are, or guess where they are going to show up when using edge tools.
MY CPU, RAM, and GPU are more than capable so i'm kinda stumped.
Any ideas?
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Comments
From your description, it sounds like what happens when the camera dives into the model. If that is the case, pull the camera back in space and use the magnifier to "zoom" your view.
Hi, thanks for replying but no, i am outside of the object when these problems occur.
In screenshot(2) you can only see half of the edge selected. If i rotate around, parts of the edge dis/reappear randomly. I mean really?
In screenshot(3) i have extract selected on the far LEFT edge on another cube face, but is showing up here in only a small section on the wrong face?? Wow...
I apologize if i seem rude, but i work with Maya on a daily basis at work, and am using Carrara personally, and have never seen an error like this in Maya, so frustration is sinking in with Carrara...
It seems to be a graphical glitch, but i mean seriously?, This type of bug in a 3D modelling application?
move the camera and it will show. this happens to me also. the edge is selected completely as the hot point is in center. just rotate or move the vertex cube
a little and you will see it. shouldn't be too annoying. display problem i work around it
Sounds like the kind of artefact that can occur when the position of a line falls between two pixels. It only seems to happen when you get a perfect storm of line width, line angle and display pixel density. Happens a lot in plenty of 3D apps, particularly games. Upping the antialiasing normally fixes it for games, although I'm not sure you can do that in the modelling room. Maybe there's a setting to change the line width?
Maybe there's something in your monitor settings for interpolating narrow line positions?
Thanks for this, i will have a look for some settings somewhere and see if anything can be changed. I dont see how this would fix the random jumping of the extract along edge, even if i try going slow, i can see the edge moving, disappears, then appears near the top. So if im trying to place it in the center, it just wont show there.
Hopefully i can at least find a fix for extract tool.
Thank you guys for the help though.
I agree, Extract Along is a separate issue, and it does seem rather hard to get a precise position with it.
Is this disappearing line an OpenGL issue with a graphics card perhaps? I don't seem to ever have that.
EDIT:
Extract along: Try moving the mouse the opposite direction you think you should move. But for more precision, just let go and move the line in translate mode.
Carrara is a bit different, in that it allows us to do a lot of things, vastly beyond making vertex models. Although it does allow us to make great vertex models, it does have its quirks. All of these are really simple to overcome with practice, though. I often hear that many folks around here prefer to model in Hexagon, which is a dedicated modeler. Maya is an entire decimal point to the right in price, so it's not really fair to compare little issues to it. If you really like to make models, Carrara can get the job done. I only model in Carrara, but am far from a pro. I never get that weird missing line thing, and extract along, extract around, etc., work easier for tight work if you zoom in a bit on the edge before using the tool.
I don't know what you mean about the primitive edges though. I only use primitives if I want just that shape with perhaps some editing via scaling or some such. Otherwise I make a vertex model instead. I almost always use vertex models instead of primitives.
Carrara is truly amazing for those of us whom want to use it for a lot more than just a modeler though. It generates terrains in a few simple settings, plants from well defined growth habits, Ocean water that automates waves, volumetric clouds, fire, hair, particles, physics...
One of the things that keeps me glued to using Carrara for myself is the wonderful Texture room shader creation process combined with the lighting and render engine. While some might get better results for this or that, Carrara allows for some really nice settings changes to really work for what I need to get done. I can go for a fully global illumination setup or go for an entirely opposite approach, choosing along the way how much work I want to give the engine to render. So for my animation work, I can design my own lighting and shaders to work well with really fast render settings and still get some really nice results - where many other software solutions I've tried are nowhere near as flexible in render engine setup or ease of use shader creation and lighting.
Your Maya might blow away my entire paragraph above. But I have become so satisfied with what I can get Carrara to do, I will never have to find that out, personally. That's a few thousand that I can spend on something else.
This is excellent advice, works 100% better than before. Thank you so much!
Maya is a great program, but so is Carrara, that's the reason i bought it. The potential is amazing, in my opinion it just needs some more TLC from DAZ i think and they will have a fantastic piece of software. I too, don't have a few thousand to spend lol on a 3D modeller (the one i use at work is company licensed)
Thanks again for Extract help, huge difference. :)
Really glad it helped. It took me a bit to figure that out too. I have been working with animating content as I get used to Carrara over the past few years and have just recently began modeling again.
I agree... Maya is awesome - got to play with Ultimate about ten or so years ago and I thought it was amazing.
I've modeled in 3ds max too, and loved it.
Using content to animate was a really cool buffer. I didn't have to model anything, and just got to pick up the amazing shading tools, the splendid sequencer timeline with graph editor, the wonderful batch queue rendering...
So now, years later, getting into modeling, I'm finding the tools and modifiers very easy to find and use - and just like before, I need a little while to get used to it and figure out all of the quirks.
I also hope that DAZ 3D decides to remain serious about our beloved Carrara and give it some lovin'. It truly deserves it and should have a large enough following to keep it alive to at least some degree. I put out a call a year or two ago to all Carrara Published Artists to keep making cool stuff for it. This store is a content super store. We've got top notch artists do top notch stuff. So I'm hoping that cool Carrara products will help to grow Carrara user base even larger, which will further help DAZ to see how important it will be to keep it a serious offering in their lineup.
I certainly cannot blame them for the love they've been giving DAZ Studio. I'm trying to like it more... but I keep going back to Carrara for its ease and power, while keeping DS as just my Content Creation tool. I actually create the content in Carrara, but use those wonderful tools to make these creations into conforming items for my figures.
So I'm seeing this whole thing as a win win for DAZ.
Ooops... am I still going on about this? :ahhh:
HI greg018 :)
Q: Do you mean that the lines are appearing anywhere on the screen at random points, or is the line re-appearing where it should appear.
Q: Can you post a Screen grab of what you're seeing.
What you're describing isn't "normal" with "primitives" in the assembly room, but is expected with the wire-frame view in the vertex modeller, it's caused by a mix of Open GL, your screen resolution, and the built in view degradation of objects in the modeller.
It's a bit like the LOD (level of detail) in principle, where the model is redrawn as you rotate it,. some areas can appear to vanish, until you rotate a little more. but the Lines should re-appear where they should be,. not at random locations.
Using one of the "Multi-view "layout may help, since you can see your model in the other views.
I agree that the extract along can seem to be erratic at times, but by playing with that tool,. you'll see that it has a logic to it, depending on where you drag your mouse., and as Dartanbeck points out, you can adjust the lines after you extract them to get a precise placement.
Hope it helps :)
Q: Do you mean that the lines are appearing anywhere on the screen at random points, or is the line re-appearing where it should appear.
If you have a look at the screenshot above, you can see that only half of the selected line is showing. Thats basically what i mean by lines not showing up. Now if i work with an object with a fairly high poly count, while rotating around the object, because the flickering WAS (see below) so sever, the edges appeared to vanish from their position (even though still there). This made it highly un-accurate for me to get an exact representation of what i was dealing with. I can see now its might be kind of difficult without seeing it in a video or live lol :)
The reason i said WAS is, after going into my Nvidia Panel and creating custom settings with everything at max, AA 16x, etc specific to Carrara, the problem is less severe. Even when using the Extract "normally" it seems a lot clearer and much less "erratic". Hopefully someone who has the same problem can a find a fix using the same manner.
Thanks for the help though, its much appreciated :)
You can turn on anti-aliasing in the model room too to help with flickering edges. At the top of the screen the render-room settings are accessed by the "up arrow in a circle" icon.