Category Archives: Troubleshooting

Closing error dialog boxes that pop up during batch rendering

Posted on by
Reply

If xsibatch hits a runtime error or stops responding, Windows will pop up a dialog box that will sit there until some dismisses it.

On the XSI mailing list last year, Alan Fregman posted an AutoHotKey script that kills Visual C++ Runtime error messages when they pop-up.

AutoHotKey is free, so you could adapt that script to handle other pop-up dialogs, like the XSIBatch.exe has topped working message.

Another possibility would be to set the HKCU\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\DontShowUI registry key. I haven’t tried it, but I read about it here.

Tip: To test the AutoHotKey script, double-click the .exe to start the AutoHotKey script. You should see an icon in your Windows task bar. Then in Softimage, run this JScript:

XSIUIToolkit.MsgBox( "Runtime Error!" , siMsgOkOnly, "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library");

The pop-up message box should close immediately.

Try exiting the AutoHotKey script (from the task bar). Then run the JScript again.,
Or just change “Runtime Error” to “All is good”, and notice that the message box is not automatically closed.

MOTOR Load Motion malfunction

Posted on by
2

Recently, I had a case where the customer reported that his rig “exploded” when he tried to load and apply a .motion file.

Since the customer was from EMEA (that’s Autodesk-speak for Europe/Middle East/Africa), I figured this was most likely this is because of the Number format in the Windows Region and Language settings. I was able to reproduce the problem by changing my Region and Language Format at Germany. Except that my character didn’t explode; rather, it ended up 121800 units from the origin looking like a Star Trek transporter malfunction.

To fix this:
Try changing the Decimal Symbol to a period (.) and the Digit Grouping Symbol to a comma (,).
Or switch the Format to English (United States).

An error occured trying to save file setenv.bat

Posted on by
Reply

If you get this error when you try to use UserTools to edit setenv.bat:

---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
An error occured trying to save file 'C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2011\Application\bin\Setenv.bat' !
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

then you have to run UserTools with elevated privileges.

Right-click the UserTools shortcut and click Run as Administrator.
-or-
Right-click UserTools, click Properties, go to the Compatability tab, and under Privilege Level, select the “Run this program as an administrator” check box.

imf_disp: Could not connect to the socket specified in the stubfile

Posted on by
Reply

You can get this error when you try to view in-progress frames with imf_disp.

To get around this error, try unsetting the MI_ENABLE_PIPE_MODE environment variable in setenv.bat.

By default, MI_ENABLE_PIPE_MODE is set to 1. To unset the variable, just delete the “1” so there is no value after the equal sign (=).

rem Render variables
set MI_ENABLE_PIPE_MODE=

MI_ENABLE_PIPE_MODE is actually more for people who are having problemswith firewalls when running Softimage (such as constant “do you want to block/unblock” messages). It prevents mental ray from opening up tcp/ip sockets. Available on Windows only

Fixing corrupted models and scenes

Posted on by
Reply

As mentioned, the 2011 Hotfix2 will prevent new corruption, but it cannot fix corrupted scenes or models.
Here’s some tips from Yanick on the Dev team for fixing any models or scenes that you may have.

If you have a corrupted scene:

  • In this case you need to load an older version of scene where the shaders are connected, do a New Scene, load the corrupted scene again, and save a clean version of the scene.

If you have a corrupted model, try this to clean it up:

  1. Import the model (some materials may be disconnected because the shaders definitions of the ports are not loaded in the same order they were saved)
  2. Delete the model again (all the shader definitions are still in the scene)
  3. Import the model again (all the shaders are going to be connected because they can find the ports definitions during the load)
  4. Export the model again to save the shaders definitions in the right order

PS In 2012, when you load or import corrupted shaders, an error will be logged in the Script Editor. That`s going to make it easier to find corrupted scene/model than looking at materials one by one.

Composite 2011 SAP: Error while initializing plugin libDLofxUi.dlmodule

Posted on by
Reply

A customer reported that Composite crashed while loading libDLofxUi.dlmodule:

Error while initializing plugin: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Composite 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack/plugins/libDLofxUi.dlmodule :

Before we could do any investigation, he emailed back to say that he found the problem: it was a conflict with Furnace 4.2. When he removed the Furnace ofx plugins from the system, Composite started without error.

I downloaded and installed Furnace 4.2 for Nuke, but I couldn’t repro the problem at first.

By default, Furnace 4.2 for Nuke installs in the folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Nuke\Furnace_4.2_Nuke, and that doesn’t cause any problems for Composite.

However, I knew that Composite searches the following folders:

  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Toxik
  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Plugins
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\OFX\Plugins
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\OFX\Toxik

so I moved the contents of the Nuke\Furnace_4.2_Nuke folder into C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Plugins, and Composite would not start, and in the logs I found this error:

00:00:48.17 [Fatal Error   ] [Messages       ] Error while initializing plugin: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Composite 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack/plugins/libDLofxUi.dlmodule : Input srcColourSpace received null policy.

BTW, the Composite logs are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\toxik\logs.

The discussion in this AREA thread also mentions that OFX plugin conflicts do happen with Toxik/Composite. The error mentioned in the original post is a different libDLofxUi.dlmodule error:

Error while initializing plugin: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Composite 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack/plugins/libDLofxUi.dlmodule : Assertion ‘_sortedPairs.find( defaultVal ) != _sortedPairs.end()’ failed..

PS – The shotgun approach to solving a Composite error like this is to rename the offending plugin file, so that it is no longer loaded.

Installation aborted, Result=1603

Posted on by
2

As I’ve mentioned before, Error 1603 during an installation can be almost anything. It’s a generic error and you have to dig into the logs to find out what really happened.

For example, a customer reported getting 1603 during an install. So we looked into the %TEMP%\Autodesk_Softimage_x64_Install.log file, and found this:

2010/12/13:15:46:24	Administrator	DEADBEEF	Install	Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (x86)	Failed	Installation aborted, Result=1603

Now that we knew it was the VCREDIST, we looked into %TEMP%\vcredist_x86_2005.log and found out that problem was that the Softimage install was blocked because installer could not remove an old version of VC++ 2005 Redistributable:

MSI (s) (98:3C) [18:28:15:187]: Product: Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable -- Error 1714.The older version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable cannot be removed.  Contact your technical support group.  System Error 1612.

Error 1714.The older version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable cannot be removed.  Contact your technical support group.  System Error 1612.

Error 1714 and google led me to the solution: rename the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\F942F94A19C0F79468FD2B85E5E8677B.

After that, we were able to remove Visual C++ 2005 redistributable from the Control Panel, and then Softimage installed ok.

ERROR : Permission denied: ‘MakeLocal’ when you create hair from selection

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, I had a case where the customer reported a Permission denied: ‘MakeLocal’ when he tried to create hair. I suggested that the material was locked somehow, but he said that he got the same error even if he applied a new material.

// ERROR : 2132 - The object Sources.Materials.DefaultLib.Scene_Material1 is locked by an override.
// ERROR : 2009-PROP-SIMakeLocal - Access denied - [line 3527 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack\Application\DSScripts\uixsiscripts.vbs]
// ERROR : Permission denied: 'MakeLocal' - [line 8779 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack\Application\DSScripts\uixsiscripts.vbs]

After some back and forth, I got a scene file and found the problem. It was because of overrides on partitions. Even if you applied a different material, you would get the same “locked by an override” error that prevents MakeLocal.

The solution was simply to change to a different pass (one that didn’t have any overrides on the materials) and create the hair there.

MotionBuilder: Error loading the resource strings at startup

Posted on by
3

Sometimes I’ll see a case in the queue, and I’ll get curious to see if I can find the answer. In this case, there was the error message “Error loading the resource strings”, so I googled it and then searched through the our old support cases.

I didn’t find a satisfactory answer (suggested resolutions like “creating a new user profile” seem like overkill to me). So I fired up Process Monitor and logged a MotionBuilder startup. When I had the log, I spent a couple of minutes filtering down the results so I could focus on the file activity in user-specific folders like

C:\Users\blairs\AppData\Local\Autodesk\MB2010\

Sure enough, after about a minute of looking for some kind of file that suggested “resource”, I saw this file:

C:\Users\blairs\AppData\Local\Autodesk\MB2010\config\ADLM\res\en-US\AdlmIntRes.xml

So, I opened AdlmIntRes.xml, corrupted it by deleting just enough to make the XML invalid, restarted MotionBuilder, and voila:

How to fix this problem? It the file is missing or corrupted, you can force Setup to recreate the file by removing MotionBuilder, renaming the C:\Users\blairs\AppData\Local\Autodesk\MB2010\ folder (for example, to MB2010.bak), and reinstalling. Otherwise, if the file seems ok, then it could be a permissions problem, or some kind of environment/configuration problem (Process Monitor would help figure it out).

In general, Process Monitor is a great way to learn about an application. In this case, I spent some time learning what files MoBu reads at startup, and what’s in those files (I spent some additional time browsing through the various text files that MoBu opens).