Smoothing causes crashs

[Thomas Monberg Thompson]

maya seems to crash whenever I smooth my characters any sujjestions?

[hopper2k]

what is exactly happening? is it closing on it's own, or is it just there seeming like it's doing nothing? for me, sometimes when i smooth a character, it will smooth right away, but other times, it can take minutes. i usually hit my "smooth" hotkey and just leave it until it smooths. i'll go into the windows task manager (hit ctrl + alt + delete) and go under the "performance" tab. it should be at 100% if it's smoothing, and then it will drop down to a much lower number once it's done smoothing the character. usually i'll just keep an eye on that, and once i see the number drop, i'll check on my character. another weird thing that happens (not sure if it's normal), but however long it took for the character to smooth, it also takes that long to deselect the character when you click off of it. i think when you see the number in the performance tab at 0 while it's smoothing, then you're screwed. but as long as it's at 100%, you should be fine. you'll just have to wait a few minutes.

if you try closing maya while it's smoothing, it probably says "not responding," and making you think it's crashed. just wait and do whatever i just said.

[Professor Watkins]

Yes, more details please. Are you using Smooth Proxy, or Smooth? How many subdivisions are you using? What color shoes are you wearing?

[Thomas Monberg Thompson]

well I hit smooth and maya thinks for a preaty damn long time, I havent seen it produce results, and it doesnt just crash out or anything, so Im guessing its just taking its sweet time to think, I just was wondering if anyone eles had simelar problems or not. And for the record, Im wearing sandles =)

[Professor Watkins]

So, uh....I guess that'd good news about the sandals. But, again......

Are you using Smooth Proxy or Smooth?
How many subdivisions are you using?
Are you re-activating a smooth node applied earlier, or applying a new smooth node to your already animated models?

The more details we have the better we can solve the problem.

[hopper2k]

is the history deleted on your character?

[Professor Watkins]

Don't delete the history. You'll need it for your skinclusters and blendshapes. But it will be important to know if you have a Smooth node from way back. If you do that could be the problem as it means that you are smoothing the character first, and then Maya is trying to weight, blendshape, and deform the smoothed version. What it should be doing is smoothing the weighted, blendshaped and deformed version. Make sense?

[dscott]

Don’t use smooth, use smooth proxy. I had the same problem when trying to smooth.

You have to go into the options and change a couple things so it doesn’t render the transparency. Rather than me type out the instructions, here's a screen shot.



This will make a cage around the mesh in the color of the layer or the mesh is in.

[Thomas Monberg Thompson]

well I found out it just takes a laborious amount of time to finally smooth the peice, and the way I smooth it is not through smooth proxy, there is a node for a smooth, however its set to zero and doesnt effect the mesh, I tried just smoothing a regular object in the scene and it still takes a long time, so I think its just taking its sweet time. I tried doing what you did dustin and it unbound my guys head and placed it at the zero point bassically

[hopper2k]

do you make sure to restart your computer every so often?

[Thomas Monberg Thompson]

also, with an object that I have on the guy thats binded to the skin without a smooth, does the same thing, I waited 15 minutes and it still didnt smooth the object

[Thomas Monberg Thompson]

hey sir, I have a question, is there any way to copy the skin weights to a file at all?

[Thomas Monberg Thompson]

SWEET IT WORKS, THANK GOD!!!!!. I just optimized the scene and it took care of all those pesky little nodes that were messing with the scene, phew!!

[Thomas Monberg Thompson]

nevermind, it didnt work, however it still hard freezes for some objects still.... ugh

[Sam Treadway]

this might not work for you but is probably worth a try...it worked for me in one situation anyways...

try swithing to wireframe view and smoothing