Here’s some tips on what to do when Softimage crashes while loading a scene.

To debug scene load problems:

1. Create a new scene.
2. Set a viewport to Explorer or Netview, and maximize the viewport.
3. In the Data Management preferences, enable the scene debugging preferences:
4. Disable all geometry operators on load
5. Detect corrupted polygon meshes and clusters upon load/freeze
6. Skip loading of floating objects
7. Merge the scene. If you still cannot load the scene, then the scene is probably corrupted. Check the Backups folder in your project: by default, Softimage keeps the last four versions of your scene in the Backup folder of the project.
8. If the scene loads, you try to isolate the problem. For example, delete half the scene elements and save the scene. Then try to open this new scene. If that scene crashes, merge it into a new scene again, delete half the scene elements, and save the reduced scene. Repeat until you find the problem.

Tip An alternative to the “maximizing the explorer and merging the scene” trick is to simply mute your viewports and then open the scene. Either way, you prevent Softimage from trying to update the OpenGL viewports, which prevents Softimage from evaluating operators.