Corrupted Mesh Fatal Error

[dskill369]

Hey All -

I've searched the forums and seen the many wonderful varieties of the Maya Fatal Error, but I think the one I'm running into is a bit unique which is why I'm posting yet another one.

I have a rigged mesh which has been polyReduced, and then had all of the non-deformer history deleted. With most polyReduce settings this is fine, but if I reduce it by exactly 87.5%, then maya will crash if I perform a "Polygons -> Cleanup Script" with a fatal error. If I delete any single face and then run the cleanup, it works fine.

Clearly I can work around it in this case, but in general, i'm worried about the consequences this may have on our game pipeline down to the road (We use polyReduce extensively for out LOD generation). My theory is that the cached version of the mesh is corrupt, and that by deleting a face it reconstructs the cached mesh properly. Still, seems a little voodoo for me.

Oh, and I'm on Maya 7.0.1.

Thanks for any insight you guys can provide!
Drew

[bundee3d]

Yeah, one of the things you can do is run cleanup in 'select only mode'. After running the script in that mode you can choose whether to clean the mesh up manually or to rerun the script in 'select and clean mode'. You can somtimes successfully clean up a mesh manually where an operation would fail if you attempt to do it automatically. You can evaluate your surface by running the clean up script in "select only mode" while turning on and off various flags to get an idea of what is exactly wrong with the mesh before zapping it. It can even sometimes reveals flaws in your modeling process or errors after the improper execution of certain scripts if the errors are consistent throughout the model. In addition to deleting the disk cache, another thing you can try when Maya's giving you 'S' is to combine your object with a simple primitve and then separate them again. It forces maya to reconstruct the object nodes. Handy indeed.

'cel

[dskill369]

Thanks for those suggestions Marcel,

I think that coming up with a simple script that combines the mesh with a primitive object, and then deletes the primitive object back out may be the route I have to take (though it does make me feel a little yucky). I tried your suggestion about running the cleanup script in "select only mode", but this still caused the crash. I was able to narrow it into the "convex hull" section of the mesh checking, but I couldn't find exactly where the error was. The really funny thing is that I can delete any single polygon, and it seems fine. Totally weird, and for now it seems to be enough of an exception that I may pretend I never saw it... we'll see if that bites me in the ass.

You did mention "deleting the disk cache" in your reply - how exactly do I go about doing this? I'm not familiar with the technique, but it sounds like it could be really useful.

My new headache is caused by corrupted skins when using "delete non-deformer history", but that's for another post.

Thanks for the help,
Drew

[bundee3d]

By default, all your disk cache files should be stored here:

C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Temp

It's not 100% but deleting the cache and restarting Maya can fix any number of problems when it comes to Maya weirdness.

About the combine separate primitive thing. I only use that as a last minute resort... when all else fails. It definitely is not the way I'm used to working but it has saved me in a pinch a few times. And when I do that I usually use three commands. Combine, Separate and delete history. Separate is missing from the pulldown menu in Maya 7 and 7.0.1 but can still be found on the polygons shelf. This is fixed in Maya 8.

'cel

[dskill369]

Ahh - ok. I'll blow away the cache just in case that was contributing to my maya weirdness. That's a new one for me.

Thanks for the help!
-Drew