Variants Lister not working

[Anonymous]

Hello community,

I just found out that my Variants Lister is not working properly!

If I create a variant in the Variants Lister, save the file, close Alias and reopen it, the variants are gone. Opening the exact same file in an older version of Alias (like 2016) shows that the variants are actually there, but I can´t see them or activate them in the newer version.

Found that in Alias Surface 2018.2. Didn´t check this in the basic release 2018 and also not in 2018.1, but will do immediately.

Is this a known issue and is somebody else facing this problem? Fast feedback for this topic would be highly appreciated!

Cheers

Marc

[Anonymous]

I just tested this behaviour on oher machines and it seems that it just happens on my machine. But still the question: How could this happen and what can I do to change it?

[Anonymous]

Another update: I just received the information, that a collaegue is also facing this issue on her machine.

We really need some help with this because it is estimated as a very important feature.

[joe.doyle.yyz]

Hello Marc,

Sorry to hear you are having this issue. I just performed a couple of simple tests on 2018.0, as well as later versions, and it worked for me. Do you have a sample file you could share in which you saved the variants but they fail to show up on restart? That would help us pin down the circumstances that led to the problem.

Thanks,

Joe

[Anonymous]

Hello Joe,

thanks for replying.

I just created a very simple file. It actually does not depend on the data in the file, whether Variants are existing or not. I could open the exact same file on another machine and have the variants present. So I´d guess this will be the same when you open the file on your machine.

If you have any suggestion on settings or preferences that could influence the behaviour, that´d be great.

Regards

Marc

[joe.doyle.yyz]

Thanks Marc. I just tested it and, as you suggested, it was fine for me. Both variants were present and could be activated. I will see if anyone the development team has any insights. 

Regards,

Joe

[bob55]

Marc, do you get a "Group" bar in the variant lister?  If so try playing with the scale slider on it.  Also if you create a new variant does your existing one appear?

 I'm wondering if it has something to do with screen resolution or screen scale.

[Anonymous]

Hi Bob,

there is no group bar in the Variants Lister. You can see in the attached images that the scale in the Variants Lister is the same after creating variants and after reloading the same file. I also found out, that I do not even have to restart Alias to face this problem. Saving file and reloading already wipes away my variants.

[Anonymous]

I kinda found a solution myself on that topic and it´s rather simple: It´s the Import options that seem to differ on my mashine. I found this topic to be more complex than expected before when I had a similar behaviour with shaders. For me there are differences in using the Menu > Open dialog, a simple drag and drop or the Menu > Import dialog. Are there any preferences that determine imported objects without specifying them before in the actual import options? If there are any preferences on that, they seem not to be valid for different releases of Alias but for specific ones. I could go on with more suggestions, but I´d like to hear what you can maybe tell me about this topic.

Regards,

Marc

[bob55]

How are you retrieving the file... I assumed you were doing a File->Open

If so there is an option in the open dialog to 
Keep Variants".  Is that on?

Also Import options are separate from Open.  

[Anonymous]

I realized that the way I am opening the file was not clearly expressed. I usually use the drag and drop functionality to open files. The problemm is still the same because I don´t change my testing workflow when I try to reproduce the issue on different machines oder when I look at that process at my colleagues´ machines. I always used the drag and drop functionality and Alias still gives me different results.