Maya on the New ATI Radeon 8500 problems

[aseesl8er]

Hi,
I have a friend that just purchased the new ATI radeon 8500 and is running Maya 4.0 on it. For some reason, when an object is selected, the colors change to white instead of the default grey. And when switched to component mode, the object's surface changes to a violet color. Is this a video card driver problem? Does anyone have a similar problem? the current driver being used is the latest one from ati (non-smoothvision) and also running on the latest directx 8 version. Please, need serious help and remedy. Thanks.

[jtk77]

sorry , can;t help but say ATI radeon and May is not a good idea.
In fact , i think most openGL heavy apps freak somwhere with ATI technology.
I hope someone has a solution for you.

..........KA-POW !......

[linx]

I recently got the same card, to get a peek at what their FireGL 87-8800 might be capable of.. getting those same color changes on selecting, and the bright whites. Frame rates are good, but those selection color changes are annoying. I've been back and forth with their tech support and still havn't received an actually reply about the problem yet. Frame rates are good with the card, and I found one work around that almost works.. Setting up a couple lights in the scene, and using the scene's lighting for the shaded views. I think it still freaks out in the component selection, but was able to do some texture painting etc with that.

[aseesl8er]

Thanks for the input sono. I tried your method to work around and got a little better results. But it's still frustrating. That bright violet in the component mode is especially annoying. If you find any more problems with the drivers, please let me know. I'm going to try to put more complex scenes into maya to perform a stress test on the opengl drivers. I also noticed another problem. When I kept on assigning different materials to the same object to try to get different textures so I can see better when modelling, Maya crashed. My friend is especially frustrated cause he spent a grip load of money to run maya and this card is just not satisfactory.

Also, when assigning a texture, it doesn't show up in texture mode ocassionally.
So what do u think ATI's future in OpengGL for this card is? I really hope they fix this problem. OpenGL is highly unstable in games like Counterstrike for thsi card. I had no choice but to stick with Direct3D. It crashes all the time with OpenGL. If you can give me their tech support contact (i.e. phone #, email) I will certainly give them a call to inquire about this huge blunder. He's really considering on selling this card and getting a Geforce 3 instead. What do u think?
OK, so if you can get me the info, I'll get on their tails to see what i can find out. keep in touch.

[linx]

I was using a Geforce3 before the radeon 8500, and even as set up as a Quadro DCC , it worked pretty poorly. Not sure what the OpenGL future will be for this card, since their FireGL 87 and 8800 will be out shortly, their reply will prollay be to buy that card if you want open gl.
ATI's # in North America Telephone Number
905-882-2626 (Located in Markham, Ontario, Canada, long distance charges may apply.)
Their email on the site is just a form on this page http://support.ati.com/contact/contactnaother.html

[jtk77]

hm. been using a DCC card now for around 4 months..everything runs awsome..but I have never heard of anyone having a good time with ATI cards of that series and higherend openGL.

..........KA-POW !......

[linx]

Hi,

I've discovered a temporary fix under Win XP for clearing up the problems this card has under open gl... Take this advice with a grain of sault, it worked for me. Go to your windows directory / System32 . Find the file names atioglxx.dll , copy it, and paste it into a back up folder... then Delete the atioglxx.dll file from the system32 directory. When I did this, I also then had OpenGL display on the second monitor. It should now be using the windows default openGL driver, or software OpenGL but it works.

Edit: Looks like it is using Software OpenGL.. or at least a fairly slow driver. Doing the frame rate test , was very slow and chopy... but the textures don't get bleeched, and the X-ray shading works.

Edited by sono on 12/15/01 09:39:53 PM.

[aseesl8er]

Thanks Sono...I want to try it but my friend is running Win2k so I don't know if it'll work even though 2k and xp have the same OS kernel. so what do u think. Should I go for it and try your method and back up that atiopengl dll before I try deleting it?

[frand]

The problem with miscolored objects was happening already in the original Radeon-series drivers. It was fixed in the second release of drivers for that card, and after that the card either worked for some, or didn't. (Random problems here and there, like Maya hanging if you turned on grid-snapping

I don't know if the Radeon-series drivers are unified or not. Could be that parts of them are. So my cautious advice would be to download the Radeon 7500 -series driver, extract the openGL-driver dll from that, and try replacing the 8500-driver file with that one. At least it's worth a shot. Worst thing I can imagine happening is just OpenGL not working when you try to open an application using it.

All the usual disclaimers about me not acknowledging responsibility for any data losses and system crashes apply

Cheers,
Frand

[jtk77]

Geez , what a hastle ..i'd seriously coution people away from any of these cards if they even want to tinker in 3d creation,.,
What about games that are OpenGL heavy ? issues with those too? man, why would you even want one if there is any hasstle to them what so ever

..........KA-POW !......

[linx]

Yes, it is a hassle. I grabbed this card to get a glimpse of what the FireGL 8800 might be capable of. The radeon 8500 actually performs really well in OpenGL games. Just seems maya is using some of the strange pixel shading tecnologies when it shouldn't...

That fix should work on Win2k , would just be in a different folder. But like i said, it works, but it is very slow since it reverts to Software OpenGL. Once you have the models built you can put the atiogl driver back in place and have the hardware acceleration.

[linuxop]

Yes, I'm having the same problems with an ati8500 and maya. This card is crap. No openGL on the second monitor, doesn't work with Maya, etc. I tried the latest beta driver and none of the Maya windows would even draw! ATI is a joke. The temp fix suggested above worked for me, but of course it's very slow. But thanks.

[kiwi]

What I don't understand is this: why do people complain when their unqualified 3D gaming cards don't work 100% with proffesional graphics applications.

go here, and stop whining.......
http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/Community...maya\_40\_NT.html

kiwi

[linuxop]

Fair enough, so can you tell me what video card's have dual monitor openGL and work well with Maya? Looking at the chart, it appears that only the FireGL4 offers dual monitor. Are there others? Thanks.

[kiwi]

www.3dlabs.com

they have both Oxygen and Wildcat cards available with dual-head...........

Windows2000 now has pretty good support for multiple video card setups.

If you can work with your 3D viewport on one screen and have all of your other dialogue boxes on another screen, then there are a pletherora of multi-monitor combinations that are cheap enough to try out.

Or - if you can find an old PCI verison Geforce then you're gold!!!

kiwi