Twilight stuck rendering specific scene

[bikerchris]

Hi all,

I can not believe how disappointed I've become with my recent software usage, and twilight delivers this too.

So I have a sketchup model, 37 scenes, a first test worked fine but now twilight is stuck rendering just one scene and will not render any active scene. Restarted program, restarted PC - What can I do, other than ask for a refund and accept you get what you pay for? I've created another model (a simple one) and it [twilight] worked fine.

I know this might be an over reaction, but having worked on a model for a while, I just want to output it and sketchup is being a real pain (to put it mildly and with polite language).

Thanks in advance.

Chris

[Chris]

What are you trying to do? Your pictures are confusing and don't really shed any light on the problem.

Are you trying to render just a single scene? And the problem is that Twilight isn't rendering what SketchUp is showing?
If that is the case, this can be caused by a couple of issues. First and foremost, make sure animation is off (set to No Animation); your picture shows that but I just want to make sure. Make sure your Update Method is set to All (looks like it is). Finally, check the Cameras menu in the Render window and make sure it is set to Current Scene (the first one).

If all that is set correctly but Twilight still isn't rendering the current view, it may be failing to render. This can be caused by excessively large textures or background/sky images, or too many lights in the scene (all resulting in running out of memory/RAM). Check your scene for texture sizes and lights.

BTW, it appears you are a licensed user. If you provide us with the email address used to purchase Twilight Render we will upgrade your forum account to give you access to our Red Carpet Resources and Technical Support forums. You can send an email to licensing@twilightrender.com or PM me with it.
EDIT: Never mind, just saw your email

[Chris]

In response to your email, no, Twilight Render doesn't animate section cuts nor does it render section cuts. Twilight Render V2 will render section cuts but the SketchUp section planes act very badly when animated.

[bikerchris]

First of all Chris, I'm sorry for my initial post - I've spent a reasonable amount of time on a model, and then spent an obscene amount trying to find workarounds to problems that shouldn't really exist, when it comes to showing non-sketchup users the model! It stems from issues with Sketchup, I would un-install / re-install it, but I wanted to avoid doing that.

Onto your response, I have found the issue which I'm sure you're familiar with. My hope was to create animation from multiple scenes, but I noticed that when I tested Twilight with individual scenes (no animation), it wasn't displaying correctly. I've now found the issue: Twilight does not reflect the Layer activity(whether on or off) in scenes. I.e. I had specific layers turned off within certain scenes and by default Twilight renders all layers unless they are manually turned off within the twilight render window. Do correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks also for letting me know about section cuts and Twilight's abilities with this, that is a shame but I'm glad V2 will render section cuts (do we know when it'll be released?). Just to confirm, do you mean section cuts will act very badly in V2, or that they act badly in the current version?

Your response is appreciated, especially considering how 'arsey' my initial post was

[Chris]

Actually, Twilight Render absolutely should respond correctly to the changes in Layer visibility in your scenes! There are sometimes problems with this if you have components with multiple layers inside the component. But otherwise, Twilight Render should only render exactly what you see in the SU scene. If it's not doing this, we need to investigate the problem further. (BTW, the Layers drop down menu in the Render window will still show a layer as "enabled" but that doesn't mean it will be necessarily be rendered; if it's off in SU, it shouldn't be rendered.)

As far as section planes, V2 can render them quite well. But if you have 'animated section planes' in your SU scene and you try to run a Twilight Render animation (either V1 or V2) the section planes totally screw themselves up. They don't work correctly in SketchUp when using the animation functions. We have a work around prepared for V2 but with V1, it's best not to try to combine animated section planes and Twilight Render animation.

[Fletch]

BikerChris,
learning any new software is frustrating, and we feel your pain.
Animation in almost any software is complex, quirky, and tough to learn... so it's best to start small.
Twilight renders animations just fine, it is simply a matter of learning to use a new tool. Give yourself time.

It sounds to me like you have neglected some pretty major details, but as you do not mention them in your posts regarding what's going wrong, it's hard to be certain... but I'll take a guess:

First, did you read the ANIMATION section of the User Manual? Read it again.
The user manual is available for download from my signature below, or from our website.

Next, You should absolutely try making a very very simple test scene with animated objects or layers similar to your big 35 scene model and practice rendering that animation first. Try a test with only 3 or 5 scenes, and only 3 layers, and test cubes or spheres with no materials applied.

Next, render test animations at very small resolutions and very simple "prelim" settings to make sure it's working right, before you waste time rendering larger resolutions and higher render settings.

Next, when you follow the Animation section of the user manual, you will notice some important things...

1. Make sure you have set SCENE DELAY in your SU model to ZERO 0. Any scene delay greater than zero will result in the scene repeatedly rendering itself for however many frames per second for however many seconds you have chosen.
2. When you want to animate layers, you must be sure to check the box that tells Twilight that you are rendering Objects (ANYTHING on different layers you want turned on or off during an animation means they are "objects".) If you do not check that it has animated objects, it will not reload geometry with each frame, this makes rendering animations much much quicker, so if you need it to reload geometry, you must tell it to do so... same with lighting (such as daylight study animation renderings).

Finally, 2 thoughts:

1. it sounds from your first post like you have done a couple things wrong:
   trying to control layer visibility with the Layers Pull-down menu in the Render Dialog... this menu is only to force visibility of a certain layer OFF in the rendering, while it's still visible in SU. For instance, in SU you want to see your face-me people or face-me plants, but for renderings, maybe you hate face-me people or face-me plants and don't want them showing up.
2. it sounds like you may have changed the "Camera" pull-down menu in the Render Dialog from "current view" to actually choosing a certain camera. This would over-ride any camera work you choose in SU, and force the render to only render the view you've chosen. This is great if you want to render only one camera view, over and over, testing as you work, but you want to move the view all around inside of SU as you work... tweaking details in SU, but hitting render on test renderings to see how the details are effecting the final product.

[bikerchris]

Just posting on another thread and rudely never responded to Fletch's extensive and considerate response.

You were quite right though, with enough time, learning and nights in (when I should have been out!), I've got a good understanding of Twilight now. I did plenty of testing which lead me to fix any problems/disillusions about the process.

I've read through your response and since then I have learned a great deal, and all of your comments are spot on. You're a helpful chap sir, and it's thoroughly appreciated. Consider me sending you a virtual pint of your choosing

There's still plenty more to learn and I'm patient enough to take it in my step, advice I give to anyone relatively new to this area.

Thanks again, you're a star!

[Fletch]

thanks for the reply, it is encouraging to hear.