SP4 and MassFX Rigid Body modifer

[lightcube]

After installing SP4 for Max 2014, I can no longer open any scenes that were created previously that contain any MassFX Rigid Body Modifiers. Trying to open any such file crashes Max to CER.

The three possible changes to my system that may have been a factor:

1. Installing Max 2014 SP4
2. Installing Rayfire 1.63 (previously had 1.62)
3. Updating the nVidia video drivers to 334.89 (which installs PhysX 09.13.1220 )

I ran all of these installations in the last week.

Is anyone else having this problem and which of these apply to you?

[spacefrog_]

Do not get any problems here opening previously created scenes which use  RB objects , after installing the final SP4. I do not have Rafire installed. My system physX install is 9.13.1220

And i think the (systemwide) installed  PhysX version is irrelevant, because MassFX uses it's own set of PhysX dll's sitting in the Max root folder. I guess the main suspect would be Rayfire, it sure installs a bunch of scripts and File-open callbacks, which might trigger some crashes...

[lightcube]

Thanks for that feedback.

In that case... anyone with latest RF installed test this?

I am going to uninstall RF tomorrow and see if crashes go away.

[Steve_Curley]

Did you by any chance install Physx directly from nVidia (prior to the SP4 update)? Applying SP4 may have reinstalled the version which comes with Max. They are not the same. You might have to reinstall the latest from nVidia in order to get those scenes working again, though other threads suggest that you should get a warning on load "missing ClassID" rather than a CTD and a CER.
Sorry, no Rayfire so I can't test that part of the equation.

[lightcube]

I wasn't getting any missing classID notices.

I think I was wrong about RigidBody or Rayfire. Since I can't open my scenes, this is all on memory... and I thought the common thread was RigidBody.

But I've gotten test files from Mir that essentially lead me to think it is not Fragementer directly.

And now I have been able to open my scenes by merging the scenes into empty scenes. Doing this and saving new scenes works fine. So maybe there is some scene open callback that is crashing. Maybe it is just local to me. I do think it is likely related to something in SP4 no that changed something. But what it might be, I have no idea now.

I'm going to merge and move on.

[spacefrog_]

mind to share one scene that crashes ?

would help identify potential problems or find a quick fix for you without the need for merge

As i doubt that you use the MR Env/Background switcher map, it might not be that crash bug i reported in the comments-section ?

Or could it be ?

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/maxstation/n222-service-pack-4-for-3ds-max-20143ds-max-design-2014-is...

Or do you have any other special maps in the ENV map slot and background from environment enabled in the display configuration ?

Maybe there are some additional maps crashing in SP4 , not just MR related Env maps ...

[RobinBall6995]

This may not be relevant, but I had a nightmare job a while back where a new version of PhysX made all max files unreadable in versions of max where it wasn't installed.

It turned out to be the PhysX tools checker on load. Nothing else was causing a problem and PhysX wasn't used in any of those scenes, but that little version checker was preventing all files I'd touched from loading on anyone else's machines.

I had to get a tech artist to hack the code to stop the check to be able to recover the data.

As I say, maybe not relevant, but I'm very wary of PhysX updates now.

[lightcube]

Josef, I'll share a file tomorrow.

After you mentioned a bug in the env map bug, it made me look more. I was so certain that the common thread was related to MassFX, but now I've found another common attribute to the files crashing--they may all include Bitmap2Material 2 Substance maps.

So the list of suspects is growing and my certainty to the origin of the problem is dwindling.

As mentioned above, I can still merge the files. So I'm not devastated.

[lightcube]

I reverted to SP3 and my problems went away. Once I was able to open the files in SP3 again. In the process, I found another common attribute to these files that wasn't apparent with merging: they all have some materials in the material editor pointing to files that do not exist. I believe this comes from the fact they were in a project with a material library that was referencing some bitmaps that were removed. Note the images were not in the scene, but in Slate.

Hopefully the info on this page is in some way helpful to the devs. I'm sure they already have a finger on it, though. And as I've uninstalled SP4, I'm off the wild goose hunt and back to my coffee 🙂