Forum - Importing Assets - Muvizu crashes when importing from Sketchup - Messages http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Forum - Importing Assets - Muvizu crashes when importing from Sketchup - Messages en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Jitbit AspNetForum Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:10:07 GMT Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:10:07 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Emily
]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:10:07 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling Emily wrote:
Hiya Pete,

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread but I just heard...it's Freddy M's birthday on Monday!
Tribute video?



Oh I would love to...but sadly I haven't had a lot of time recently - therefore I was going to revisit this when the new version of Muvizu was released, now if it had been the 30th...... ]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:06:12 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Emily
Sorry to resurrect a dead thread but I just heard...it's Freddy M's birthday on Monday!
Tribute video?

]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:01:42 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling - not sure I will be able to complete this over one weekend - I suspect it will take a LOT longer..but will keep you both posted.

Thanks for the ideas Jim - I think I understand what you mean and it's what I thought I would have to do...the shortcuts will really help as well

Thanks again

Pete]]> Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:01:46 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from glasgowjim

http://dl.google.com/sketchup/gsu8/docs/en/SketchUp8RefcardWin.pdf
edited by glasgowjim on 14/01/2011]]> Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:56:46 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from glasgowjim
Glad it's coming along - I am looking forward to seeing what you can do with it.

You would need to break the collision up into sections, the same as the stage - and then export the collision sections and put them into the appropriate .ASE file. You should be able to get away with a few simple cuboids.

The good thing about creating your own collision is that you can make it whatever size/configuration you want. What I would do is something like this:



So keep the collision geometry as close to the size of the stage as possible, which would mean that any characters and props would be able to stand on it correctly, but if you make the collision volumes slightly smaller where the stage sections meet you will be able to get them to fit together more easily.

Take care,
-Jim.]]> Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:53:08 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Emily
Sounds brill! Bohemian Rhapsody would get my vote. Have you seen the muppets version?



Although you could probably do any Queen song, there are a lot of great ones! I didn't know there was a model of Wembley - there's so much fantastic stuff on SketchUp!

There are a few speacial animations for 'We Will Rock You' too - so it would be good if someone ould make use of them.

Sounds like you have a lot of work over the weekend!

I'm sure the result will be awesome.

Wiggle]]> Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:51:51 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling
Not sure which song I am going to do yet - I had got a "idea" on doing a Bohemian Rhapsody video - complete with the opera part (using the original video) - although I think that maybe a little ambitious - I was also going to try to recreate the live aid version even had Freddie sitting at the piano done correctly....I even found a model of the old Wembley stadium!

For now I think We Will Rock You will be the easiest or maybe something like "Crazy little thing called love" as Freddie played guitar and therefore I don't have the problem of getting the correct "mike" stand...ah thinking too much now....I will get the stage sorted and then go from there

Cheers

Pete]]> Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:46:25 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Emily
Had a wee look at the Queen Stage in SketchUp - it's very very similar to our 'Gears rock stage' set (in the entertainment category).

The most obvious difference between them is that the SketchUp version has lighting panels at the back and sides, and a geometrical design at the front.

What I would suggest, to give you an easier life, is to export these sections of the SketchUp object, and place them onto the Gears set. In the Gears set, you can change the thunder bolt to black to hide it, and remove the Atomic bomb prop if you want a different look.

This will result in a similar style to the one in SketchUp, hopefully with less of a headache, and you can get on with the fun stuff - animating your movie!

Incidentally, which Queen song did you have in mind?

I started a version of '
- but haven't quite found the time to finish it

All the best with your project, can't wait to see the result.

Em]]> Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:38:48 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling
I have managed to do quite a lot with this and it's looking quite good even if i say so myself.

One question on the collision tut though - If I did this for the entire "stage" and then exported each section individually would the collision object be the size of the exported section or the entire stage and would it still work? - obviously I intend to try but just wanted to check what you would recommend the best way to do this would be.

One thing I have noticed though is that the "new" version of Sketchup is very "sketchy" to say the least and even on a 8GB 64 bit Quad core machine it "freezes" and takes an age to do anything. Any tips on how to "switch" back to the select tool from a move? - it is so fustrating moving the mouse to the arrow icon and the move continuing.

Cheers

Pete]]> Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:27:03 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling right better do some work - and I will play around with it later

Cheers

Pete]]> Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:49:28 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from glasgowjim
You could create your own collision box around each section - if it was slightly smaller than the piece of the stage that you are importing it would allow intersection between each part, which should allow a better "fit".

I did a tutorial about creating collision volumes which you might find useful:

http://www.muvizu.com/Video/12851/Importing-from-Sketchup-Part-2-Basic-Collisio

Good luck!
-Jim.]]> Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:39:38 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:33:04 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling
That's what I have already tried - however I did not know about the export selected option - which would certainly make it a lot easier (I was removing parts manually and doing it that way which was obviously very time consuming!)
I will have another look at this later - thanks for the suggestion!

Cheers
Pete]]> Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:23:42 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from glasgowjim
After having a look at the model myself I can see that it's very complex with lots of internal surfaces - I have passed it on to the devs to have a look at but something that you might want to try in the meantime is splitting it up.

You could select the bottom of the stage, backstage, lighting area and sides separately and export them as individual .ASE files - this would hopefully cut down on the extra faces created by the export process and decrease the likelihood of a GPF.

The way that you do this is by selecting the part you wish to export by itself and changing "Export Selected" to YES when you go to Export as ASE file.

Take care,
-Jim.]]> Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:03:16 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling The ASE file alone was 23mb+ - that's what makes me wonder about how the sketchup does actually export the files and maybe there is something I am doing wrong - as said if I remove alot of the elements of the model I can eventually get it imported into Muvizu - although the performance suffers a lot and moving it around is painful - plus so much of the model is missing, it's hardly worth bothering with.
I have managed to send the file to the bugs address with details on how to reproduce - maybe it will be easier using these instructions

Hope this helps.

Pete]]> Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:08:12 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from glasgowjim

21mb? That's pretty huge - what size was it to begin with? I use WinRar and maximum compression, which seems to work well with ASE files.

The big problem is that the Sketchup exporter adds a lot of faces and lines in order to make the model compatible with Unreal (faces in Unreal must be 3 or 4 sided while they can be any number of sides in Sketchup) and due to the fact that it's an automated process a lot of the stuff that's added is pretty unnecessary - which leads to larger file sizes and compatibility issues.

You weren't being impatient - the rest of the office was working last week but I took a few extra days off after new year - so there were people working at Muvizu HQ.

If you can't get it small enough to e-mail you can use WinRar to split the archive into parts or, alternatively, upload the model to a file sharing site such as Filefront.com.

Take care,
-Jim.]]> Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:45:49 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling Thanks for the reply - Working in software support, I understand the need for clear details and I apologise if I was impatient in anyway.
I have zipped up the ase file along with the sketchup file and the log file. However the size of the file is over 21MB! - I am not sure how you get the file down to only 5MB....

What I am not sure about is that the sketchup file is reasonably small but the ASE file is massive! - is that where the problem stems from? - even though I have exploded the model and removed a lot of the elements it is still large - If I remove too much more, I will have nothing left!

I will try to send this from my yahoo account - however if you have any suggestions on reducing the file more that would be better.

Thanks

Pete (Prefer that to Quoling )
edited by Quoling on 10/01/2011]]> Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:30:52 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from glasgowjim
We are yet to discover a "Hard Limit" of faces that causes a GPF, but if there are any more than 65,535 faces you wouldn't get a collision mesh generated properly. Although if the model is very complex it might be causing an out of memory error.

I have found that if a model is more than ~15mb it probably won't import correctly, either causing a crash or having missing faces. This isn't a rule though - I am sure that there are larger models which import correctly, it's just that the ones I have tried haven't.

The models can be compressed pretty thoroughly using WinZip/WinRar/7Zip - a 66mb model can be compressed to 5mb - so could you please compress the model and e-mail it along with a crash dump and a brief description of what's happening? (Just in case it's not me that gets the e-mail).

The dumps can be found at C:\Program Files\Muvizu\MuvizuGame\Logs (or C:\Program Files (x86)\Muvizu\MuvizuGame\Logs if you have a 64-bit system) and the e-mail address is bugs@muvizu.com

Hopefully the devs can have a look at the model and figure out exactly what is causing the crash.

Take care,
-Jim.]]> Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:23:08 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling Sat, 08 Jan 2011 11:00:51 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Emily I can't test this at the moment but I'll get back to you next year ]]> Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:52:07 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling Emily wrote:
Ah - sorry to hear that!
It was the only suggestions that came to mind.

Can you email the object which is causing you problems to bugs@muvizu.com - we can look into it next week when the office opens again.

Cheers

Emily.


It's a bit big to email! - from the google sketchup warehouse search for "Queen Stage" and choose any of the "small" Queen Concert stage objects, export from sketchup and then try to create the object in muvizu - as said the problem seems to be related to the amount of mesh in the object or the size of the file itself - I have tried exploding the object in sketchup and then removing a lot of the components to see if that would help - it has in general, although I do still get the GPF.

Is there a limit to the size that Muvizu can import as a object?]]> Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:50:02 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Emily It was the only suggestions that came to mind.

Can you email the object which is causing you problems to bugs@muvizu.com - we can look into it next week when the office opens again.

Cheers

Emily.]]> Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:45:30 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling Emily wrote:
Stupid question, but did you try scaling in down in SketchUp before exporting it?


Yes I did - I made it as small as possible - however the error is in reference to the amount of meshes and also seems to be due to the size of the created file.

Emily wrote:

Another suggestion - when you import the object into Muvizu - before you move it at all - right click the object and change the settings so that 'floats in the air' is checked. Often objects fall through the ground, causing Muvizu to crash, but if they are floating then they don't fall. Let me know if that helps.


Yes tried that and it still produces the GPF error.]]> Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:37:34 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Emily


Another suggestion - when you import the object into Muvizu - before you move it at all - right click the object and change the settings so that 'floats in the air' is checked. Often objects fall through the ground, causing Muvizu to crash, but if they are floating then they don't fall. Let me know if that helps.




Happy New Year!!]]> Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:33:52 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from ukBerty
You're not going to like this but.....

I've had this problem a lot - I think that not all models in Sketchup are as clean or well put together as you would like - it's a bit of a free for all.

My solution - give up and choose a simpler model.

Told you that you wouldn't like it !

Berty]]> Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:21:45 GMT http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic814-muvizu-crashes-when-importing-from-sketchup.aspx Message from Quoling
When I import the object is never where I woule expect it to be...I have to scroll back to find the object and then move it - and if I get this wrong it crashes Muvizu.

Any suggestions on how to import either large and complex models or how to resolve the GPF?]]> Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:55:45 GMT