Xgen Anim wires error 'no wires found'

[cathnelson]

Hi all

I'm working with Xgen for an assessment at college which is due soon and have encountered an issue when trying to apply dynamic movement to the hair.

I'm creating a character covered in fur and am using groomable splines. I've created an animwire modifier to get the fur to move as the character walks (the character's mesh has no rig, it is using a geocache to animate created from another version of the file where a rig was present). I have attached the hair system but when I try to preview to see if it worked, I get the following error:

// Error: XGen:  No wires found. Deactivating the module.

I can't really find any explanation for this error online nor in the tutorials and notes my teacher gave me. I've spent 2 days searching for some way to fix it but the only mention I found was in this forum, but their solutions (which included switching off 'update preview automatically', which I can't have on anyway because the computers are painfully slow when it comes to Xgen) didn't work for me, and based off what I did find it seems to be a random bug, but I'm not sure. no tutorials I found online ever encounter or address this this, and none of my classmates have encountered it either, so have I missed a step somewhere or done something wrong? this is my first attempt to animate Xgen as well, so I'm pretty new to all of this.

any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

[Michael_Todd]

First off, is the geo cache you are using in a namespace? Was it imported or referenced? Did you make your XGen collection on non namespaced geo? It might be better to do that and use a blendshape to the cached geo. XGen has to be in the same namespace as the geo it is bound to and you can do this when creating or importing a collection onto namespaced geo.

You should also cache out the animwire curves to an alembic cache and point to that in the animwire modifier. Remember to export the patches for batch rendering as well.

Cheers

[nelsonlim]

I am experiencing the same issue with my xgen files. I am using Maya 2017 Update 4.

My grooms are created on a scene file containing the scalp geometry without namespaces. I am using non-interactive groom.

I then export the groom into an xgen collection.

I then reference in the geometry (which also contains my scalp geo) into a scene file using namespace "ash1".

Then, I import the xgen collection into the scene specifying the same "ash1" namespace on import.

I make sure to turn the update preview automatically off. And cleared all descriptions from showing their hair primitives.

I add an anim wire modifier onto one of the descriptions.

I then create maps to create maps and points that are making use of clumping1.

I then "Create Hair System" and make the curves dynamic.

I go to frame 1 which corresponds to my anim wire ref frame, select each of the curves under hairSystemOutput1(not the group) and click "Attach Hair System".

As soon as I turn back on the "Update preview automatically" and jump back to frame 1 I get the below error:

// Error: XGen:  No wires found. Deactivating the module. [ash1:Head_hair2,ash1:bangs_outer_hair2,AnimWires1] 

If I play a frame ahead, I see my nHair curves are moving. But I do not see the xgen primitives move. Instead I get the below error:

// Error: XGen:  Live mode is enable but the reference frame wasn't read yet: 1 

Whether I reference or import the geometry which was used by the xgen groom, I seem to get the same issue whenever I use namespaces.

This issue is resolved if I do not use namespace on the geometry and the xgen collection. 

Similarly, I have tried this with referencing a scene file containing the xgen collection and geometry. I get the same errors when I try to reference the scene in with a namespace. Without a namespace, the xgen anim wires seem to work perfectly.

Is this a known bug? Unfortunately, I do need a way to be able to use some sort of namespace as I have multiple characters in the same scene which might each be using xgen hair.

I would appreciate any help here. Many thanks!