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Keyboard freeze

11 REPLIES 11
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Message 1 of 12
Summer!
1114 Views, 11 Replies

Keyboard freeze

Is anyone else having problems with the keyboard freezing up? I get a little keyboard icon in the bottom right corner & the only way I have found to solve it is to force quit.

 

Seems intermittent - one afternoon it was happening to me every five mins, other times not so much.

 

Any ideas?

11 REPLIES 11
Message 2 of 12
ABC_CNG
in reply to: Summer!

It is a known bug. Very annoying.  It is not confined just to Smoke on Mac.  I encounter it on my Flame all the time, usually using the right and left arrow keys.

 

The software thinks the last  key typed is is stuck, and you have to press that key again to unstick.  When trying to press keys on the frozen keyboard, look near the bottom of the UI and you will see a message telling you which key is stuck.  Try typing that key instead of forcing quit.

 

 

Message 3 of 12
Robert.Adam
in reply to: Summer!

Hi.

 

This is a known issue and we haven't yet got to the bottom of it unfortunately.

It seems to be caused by Smoke thinking that a modifier key (command, shift, option, control) is still pressed when in fact it isn't. That "zombie" modifier interferes with proper functionality of all other hotkeys and of the mouse clicks (that's why you can't even open the menu to exit Smoke).

 

Usually, there's a little message in the lower left-hand corner of the screen that indicates what key you must press to "unlock" Smoke. Somethig like "KEY_R" for example, which would mean you need to press the R key.

 

Other tricks that worked in certain cases were to Command-Tab out of Smoke and then back in a few times, or to press the Command key repeatedly until the keyboard icon goes away. 

 

We're still looking into this issue. There seem to be several causes for this. We have found and fixed a few of them, but there seem to still be some gremlins in the system that we haven't got to yet.

 

Regards,

robert.



Robert Adam
Program Manager

Message 4 of 12
Summer!
in reply to: Robert.Adam

Thanks for this feedback, unfortunately most times it happens I don't get the message as to which is the offending key, so my only option is to quit smoke.

 

Is there any way to somehow force this message to appear?

 

Thanks in advance!

Message 5 of 12
Grant.Kay
in reply to: Summer!

Hi,

Well usually pressing keys forces this message to appear.

But normally I have found that if I tab through the SHIFT/CONTROL/OPTION/COMMAND buttons, it releases the shortcut and comes back.

Hope this helps!

Regards
Grant

Grant Kay
Principal Learning Content Developer

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Message 6 of 12
Summer!
in reply to: Grant.Kay

Thanks everyone for the feedback, it's weird though, I can tab through & hit keys like there's no tomorrow but I can't prompt any messages...

Message 7 of 12
chismoke
in reply to: Summer!

Your not alone, I get the keyboard freeze all the time and never get any message. Like has been mentioned, if you alt click, control click, shift click around the interface it will usually unlock the key.

 

However I have noticed that  it may take awhile to get the first freeze, but once you do they seem to come more frequently until a reboot is required. I'm on the three freeze and out plan...

Message 8 of 12
Smokezen
in reply to: Summer!

Are people still experiencing this problem? I deal with this on a daily basis. It's emberassing to have to constantly restart over and over again, with clients in the room. 

 

ADSK- Where are you with resolving this?

Message 9 of 12
Robert.Adam
in reply to: Smokezen

Hi.

 

We fixed a couple of bugs related to this over the past year.

Some specific instances where the OS would not send Smoke the signal that a key (most ofter Control) was no longer being pressed, so Smoke still thought that key was pressed.

 

What version are you running?

Do you get a message in the lower part of the Smoke UI like the one in the image below?

lose_keyboard_error.png

 

If you do, then pressing the specified key (Right Control in this example) should restore functionality.

 

Regards,

Robert.



Robert Adam
Program Manager

Message 10 of 12
BKM
Advisor
in reply to: Robert.Adam

I also find this happening and can sometime clear it up if you CMD+TAB to the finder or any other open app.


Flame/Smoke Editor
Check out the Premiumbeat Smoke Blog
http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/category/smoke-2/
Message 11 of 12
Smokezen
in reply to: BKM

Yeah, I get that error but when I hit the ALT-R keys, it doesn't fix it. Also, Control Tabing out and coming back in doesn't fix it. The beta team won't address it because it was a pre-existing problem. Multiple cases with ADSK support haven't accoplished anyting either. 

 

Message 12 of 12
Robert.Adam
in reply to: Smokezen

Hi.

 

If the message says ALT_R, that actually means the right Alt key, not ALT+R.

Try that and see if it unlocks the keyboard.

 

best regards,

Robert.



Robert Adam
Program Manager

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