Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

General Moho topics.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

User avatar
Lúthien
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:36 pm
Location: Unquendor
Contact:

Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Lúthien »

hi,

I'm having another puzzling issue in relation with 3D extruded layers (the first one had to do with a bug in multithreaded rendering of 3D extruded layers here).

It's in a scene of someone riding through a street on a scooter, seen from the perspective of that person.
I had experimented a little with extruding shapes, and next to using that to create the house blocks, I found that it worked quite well to create some of the objects for that scene, like a tram and a couple of parked cars. It's of course no true 3D, but that's not required in this case.

But when I did some test renders I found that the cars that I had thus made rendered in black-and-white, while they're coloured in both the workspace and the preview. This time it makes no difference if it's single-or multi-threaded rendering (though the multi-threaded also shows that 'flickering layers bug' here).
The interesting thing is that another 3D extruded object - the tram - does get properly rendered in colour (in the yellow circle in the screen captures).
I think I looked at pretty much anything that I could think of to find if there was anything that was different on those black-and-white-rendering car layers compared to the tram one, but I cannot find anything at all.

Because it has grown into quite a complex scene I wondered if it was maybe the layer depth (the car layers are nested two group layer levels deep), but when I copied the tram to that group layer it showed up in colour.

I also tried drawing additional simple shapes in the layers with the cars, such as a yellow triangle - to exclude that the car shapes might have some hidden problem that only showed up when rendered. But no, the yellow triangle when drawn in those layers also lost its colour.

Anyone any idea what the problem might be?
Images: the first is the workspace; the second a preview; and the last one is a frame from the rendered video file.

Image
Image
Image

Anime Studio Pro 11.1 / OSX Yosemite 10.10.5
reniad nu elin luin
User avatar
Lúthien
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:36 pm
Location: Unquendor
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Lúthien »

Here's a short rendering of the animation, at half frame rate / size, but it's clear enough:



I still haven't found any clue what causes those cars to show up like that. It's definitely annoying my socks off that I can't figure this out. :shock:
Any clues, anyone?
reniad nu elin luin
User avatar
synthsin75
Posts: 9973
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
Location: Oklahoma
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by synthsin75 »

If you could provide an example file that shows the problem, we'd have much better luck figuring it out. It's just much easier to figure out what not to do rather than guessing at what you did do to achieve that result.
User avatar
jezjones29
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2006 9:43 pm
Location: Wales, UK
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by jezjones29 »

In the preferences panel, under the General tab there's an option for 'Enable export/import hardware acceleration'. I've found un-ticking this helps with a few issues. What you want to do is possible though, so I hope you find a fix.
User avatar
Lúthien
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:36 pm
Location: Unquendor
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Lúthien »

synthsin75 wrote:If you could provide an example file that shows the problem, we'd have much better luck figuring it out. It's just much easier to figure out what not to do rather than guessing at what you did do to achieve that result.
Hi Synthsin, thanks! I'm now looking into the suggestion made by jezjones29. If that doesn't resolve it I will create and upload an example file.
jezjones29 wrote:In the preferences panel, under the General tab there's an option for 'Enable export/import hardware acceleration'. I've found un-ticking this helps with a few issues. What you want to do is possible though, so I hope you find a fix.
hi Jezjones, I don't seem to have any GPU- or hardware acceleration-related settings in the preferences panel. The only place where it is mentioned is in the 'Display Quality' popup at the bottom right of the work area.

I see that in the AS pro11 manual it says:
Enable export/import hardware acceleration: (Windows Only)
which might explain it since I'm using a mac.
On the other hand, it does not say (Windows Only) for the Enable GPU option, and I don't see that one either.
I do have a functioning GPU though.

Right now I'm trying the other render options: as image sequence, and the other video formats.
The Image Sequence doesn't help: it gives the same result as the mp4 video render output that I used above.
Will check the other options now first.
reniad nu elin luin
User avatar
Lúthien
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:36 pm
Location: Unquendor
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Lúthien »

Alas, none of the render formats made a difference.
I also tried with the GPU Acceleration option in the "Display Quality" workspace pop-up checked and unchecked, though I think it's not supposed to influence the rendering anyhow.

I sent a mail to technical support about the missing "Enable GPU:" option in the Preferences -> General tab

I created a test file with just the cars that show the problem: download here (~55 Kb)

This is what I see when I preview frame 56:
Image

When rendering frames 1-156 with these settings:
Image

I get this result:


many thanks for your help!
reniad nu elin luin
User avatar
synthsin75
Posts: 9973
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
Location: Oklahoma
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by synthsin75 »

There's definitely a bug here. When I open the file, the cars are black and white until I either select its layer or render a frame. I've tried writing a layerscript to force AS to do this while rendering, but so far I've only been able to make it work for one layer. Your tram layer works because it is the topmost layer. No idea why, but the topmost layer works correctly.

Sorry I don't have better news.
User avatar
slowtiger
Posts: 6081
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 6:53 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by slowtiger »

I remember, years ago I had a problem with images rendered only in black and white instead of colour. That was caused by nested masking. But I think there's no masking involved in this scene?
AS 9.5 MacPro Quadcore 3GHz 16GB OS 10.6.8 Quicktime 7.6.6
AS 11 MacPro 12core 3GHz 32GB OS 10.11 Quicktime 10.7.3
Moho 13.5 iMac Quadcore 2,9GHz 16GB OS 10.15

Moho 14.1 Mac Mini Plus OS 13.5
User avatar
Víctor Paredes
Site Admin
Posts: 5661
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Barcelona/Chile
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Víctor Paredes »

I remember I had similar problems many years ago, when working with .obj objects. The white fill appeared randomly in the render. I thought it was solved.
Image Image Image Image
Moho Product Manager

www.mohoanimation.com
Rigged animation supervisor in My father's dragon - Lead Moho artist in Wolfwalkers - Cartoon Saloon - My personal Youtube Channel
User avatar
Lúthien
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:36 pm
Location: Unquendor
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Lúthien »

slowtiger wrote:I remember, years ago I had a problem with images rendered only in black and white instead of colour. That was caused by nested masking. But I think there's no masking involved in this scene?
Hi Slowtiger,

no, I haven't used any masking.
Victor Paredes wrote:I remember I had similar problems many years ago, when working with .obj objects. The white fill appeared randomly in the render. I thought it was solved.
Hi Victor, that's interesting. However, these are just regular shapes created within AS.
synthsin75 wrote:There's definitely a bug here. When I open the file, the cars are black and white until I either select its layer or render a frame. I've tried writing a layerscript to force AS to do this while rendering, but so far I've only been able to make it work for one layer. Your tram layer works because it is the topmost layer. No idea why, but the topmost layer works correctly.

Sorry I don't have better news.
I'm not certain that it is the layer order? The file that I linked to is a simplified version that I created in order to isolate the problem and make it easier to reproduce and render. I made it by creating a new file and copying the nested layer with the cars in it.
In the original file the layers containing the houses are below the cars: they're also extruded shapes and they don't have this problem.

I can try and see what happens if I copy one of those car shapes to a topmost level, that'd be interesting maybe.

I'll see if I can submit a bug report then. Yesterday evening I submitted a support ticket to ask if there is a way to enable the GPU in the mac version of AS, or otherwise, if it can be expected in a future version. I also pointed at this topic and asked if they could help.
I got a reply that came down to "GPU support isn't available for the mac version", and that was that, alas.

update: I got a another reply:
I spoke with the Lead Engineer.
If you are using 11.1, you are using GPU functioning on Mac
The Mac System Drivers do not have issues that may require users to turn off the GPU, so the option to Disable was not included.
Make sure you are using 11.1 and you should be good to go.
So much for the possibility of toggling that switch to test if the HW acceleration really is the culprit ... I suppose I best submit a bug report and attach that test file then.
reniad nu elin luin
User avatar
synthsin75
Posts: 9973
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
Location: Oklahoma
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by synthsin75 »

Lúthien wrote:I'm not certain that it is the layer order? The file that I linked to is a simplified version that I created in order to isolate the problem and make it easier to reproduce and render. I made it by creating a new file and copying the nested layer with the cars in it.
In the original file the layers containing the houses are below the cars: they're also extruded shapes and they don't have this problem.

I can try and see what happens if I copy one of those car shapes to a topmost level, that'd be interesting maybe.
Yeah, I saw that your image with the tram had that as the top layer, so I tried that with a car and that is the only one to render in color. As a kludge, you might try rendering a separate pass for each car, and comping them together. Just checked, and as long as they are at the top, not in a group or anything, you can turn off visibility for the top one and the next one will render in color. So the topmost visible layer works right.
User avatar
Lúthien
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:36 pm
Location: Unquendor
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Lúthien »

synthsin75 wrote:Yeah, I saw that your image with the tram had that as the top layer, so I tried that with a car and that is the only one to render in color. As a kludge, you might try rendering a separate pass for each car, and comping them together. Just checked, and as long as they are at the top, not in a group or anything, you can turn off visibility for the top one and the next one will render in color. So the topmost visible layer works right.
Aha, I will try that. Thanks!
I submitted this issue as a bug as well. I hope it they can resolve it.
reniad nu elin luin
User avatar
jezjones29
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2006 9:43 pm
Location: Wales, UK
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by jezjones29 »

Another option would be to create the cars a little differently. The extrude option doesn't always produce the results you expect.
I tried to fix your file but decided it would be best to try another option: http://www.animestudiotutor.com/link/272/
Feel free to download and adapt to your needs.
User avatar
Lúthien
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:36 pm
Location: Unquendor
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Lúthien »

jezjones29 wrote:Another option would be to create the cars a little differently. The extrude option doesn't always produce the results you expect.
I tried to fix your file but decided it would be best to try another option: http://www.animestudiotutor.com/link/272/
Feel free to download and adapt to your needs.
Thank you!! That looks very good, actually! I will certainly have a look, and make sure to credit How did you do that?
By importing externally created 3D objects?

I've looked into how 3D objects can be created natively within AS by assembling them from individual 2D planes rotated in 3D (there's a tutorial on how to assemble a cube in the Tutorial Manual), but I couldn't escape the impression of hammering square pegs into round holes.
AS is a very good 2D program but it seems a lot easier to just use a true 3D application like Blender and export - import the objects.
I have considered to do that, but my first experiments with extruding seemed so very promising.

I also tried exporting the .obj version from AS and importing that in Blender, with the vague hope that that might offer a workaround. But it turns out that 2D layers are not included in the export (the street surface, the house facades, the overhead power lines, the scooter, the character's hands ...), so there is altogether too much missing to make this an easy way out.



But at least the cars are coloured :|
reniad nu elin luin
User avatar
Lúthien
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:36 pm
Location: Unquendor
Contact:

Re: Color disappearing in 3D-extruded layers

Post by Lúthien »

jezjones29 wrote:(...) it would be best to try another option: http://www.animestudiotutor.com/link/272/
Feel free to download and adapt to your needs.
When opening the file in AS11 it generated an error message: Could not open file. Error details: Bad file header: PK

The downloaded file is named shared_file_233_1.anme so AS11 thinks it's a v.10 file.
The contents started indeed with the characters PK as the error said, but followed by garbled binary content indicating it is a zipped file. But that's not what AS11 expects from a v.10 .anme file because they're supposed to be plain text. The v.11 .anime format seems to be zipped to reduce the file sizes.

Because of the file name shared_file_233_1 I'm wondering whether animestudiotutor.com automatically renames files?
Maybe they forgot to take that format change / extension change into consideration?

After renaming the file extension to .anime it did open correctly!
reniad nu elin luin
Post Reply