"The Cathedral" another building project

[dendwaler]

Thx for answering JanB,
but the problem has to do with the system memory, as far as i know this is completely indepent of the cache of the diskstorage cache.
I do have a 256 GB SSD as primary disk, that means that i cannot use the so called " ready boost" option with a memory stick, because w7 switches this off on fast systems.
It also has no connection with the cache inside blender, the cache there is used for renderings and animation inside blender.

It has to do with the exporter PyPRP1 , because that exporter seems not to flush data during its export.
It seems to keep its data until the very very end, where it finally writes the " sum" and " fni" file.
I noticed that it seems better not to use the option to pack textures inside Blender.
I used to do that if i want to share Blendfiles.
But the unpacking of the file seems to happen inside the exporter again. This adds another amount of internal used memory.
The memory use seems to decrease with a " clean" relative path to the used texture.
It would be nice if it is possible to just add single objects without a complete export.(1 export of the current age is more then 1 hour!)
It must be possible somehow, but i do not understand how to do it.

The system tray in w7 is indeed a "memory munger" .
I did use dropbox a few times for filesharing and its always opened in there.
Closing this down completely , gives me 1 Gbyte more memory space available.
VLC streaming is another one.

And yes, it worked again!
I just finished a new fresh export!
It took 1518 seconds because the Texcache already existed.

[Sirius]

Hmmm... You could try splitting your Age in multiple PRPs, and export them one at a time.
Since you would be exporting only a part of your scene, PyPRP would use less memory.

This might also be better if you want to update only a section of your Age, so you don't have to export all over again but only the part you modified.

[dendwaler]

Splitting into multiple prp files might be an idea.
How can i do that, without loading times between the separated parts?

[Sirius]

In your "Book" text file:

Code: Select all

   pages:
      - index: <some unique page index>
        name: <some unique page name>

Then, you have to apply the string property "page_num" "<page number>" to EACH of your objects... There should be some function to copy a property to multiple objects, though I don't remember it.


Finally, you can either export as .age (full age), or .prp (single prp, you have to type a filename such as "MyAgeName_District_MyPageName.prp").
It should handle the .age, .sum and Texture files ok.

[dendwaler]

Thx a lot sirius!,
I am going to try this.
All around code is realy my weak point.
Still i learn more and more from day to day.
I hope this works, it saves me so much troubles.

[dendwaler]

I divided the age into 5 prp files.
Since a long , long time ago I am able again to export the cathedral without to much hassle.
That gives me more time and ability to continue and optimize the age.

Thx again Sirius for pointing this to me.

Furthermore i found this 2 years old post from GPNMilano,
it's a splendid explanation on how to do this exactly.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2641&p=29273&hilit=copy+property+to+multiple+objects#p29273

It works very easy, and its done in a few clicks. The option to paste the num_page at once to a selection of objects inside blender is a great timesaver.

GPNMilano's post should be in the WIKI for ever, because its very very essential knowledge when you arrive to the point of writing bigger ages.
Can someone do that?

[Sirius]

You're welcome ! Glad I could help.

[dendwaler]

I continued to work again on " the cathedral"
Dividing the age into several pages was more difficult then i initially thought.
Yes, i could export it again, but had to alter a lot of settings.
Regions and its actors only work properly if they share the same page number.
The visregions have to interact with objects and complete regions with actors being on different pages.
And on which page do you have to put the visregion itself ?
This kind of things makes it hard for me, i do not enough understand how things internally work.

Now a new problem arises.
I cannot export the age using: " All as full age , per-page textures (age), because that causes near to the end a memory overflow ( i only have 8Gbyte internal Ram and no more slots available))
I can use: " All as single prp, per -page textures (.prp)" I do have 6 pages now , and do this 6 times.

The problem is that that option does not build the file : *District_BuiltIn.Prp
It only updates this file when it already exists!

I have "hacked-in" an old _BuitIn.prp file, but i am not sure or some problems that i encounter inside the age are because of an corrupted " BuiltIn file"

Is there a way To Make a fresh " BuitIn.prp" export?

[Sirius]

Plasma can handle objects across PRPs fine - I never had any issue with it. Although you rarely need to do it, you can, for instance, have an object's drawables in a PRP, have its physics in another, and its materials in another one again.


The problem is PyPRP doesn't handle fine which objects belongs to which PRP.
When you export a scene, PyPRP takes each objects in the scene, and writes it to the PRP it belongs to, with all its "sub-objects" (I mean its collision, vertices, sound interface...). When an object is linked to another, the script only makes sure the second object exists in Blender - but does not check its page_num properties.
Which means in the end, if you have object A linked to object B, Plasma will load both of these objects, but will look for B in the same PRP as A.
Sometimes Plasma will crash during loading, sometimes when you trigger a region... I even got a PRP working offline, while online it would crash the game (that was when debugging the Gahreesen Wall... ).

The problem is that that option does not build the file : *District_BuiltIn.Prp
It only updates this file when it already exists!

I have "hacked-in" an old _BuitIn.prp file, but i am not sure or some problems that i encounter inside the age are because of an corrupted " BuiltIn file"

Is there a way To Make a fresh " BuitIn.prp" export?

The Built-In file is not created when you do a .prp export.
This file loads a YourAgeName.py python file, and is required to use SDL variables.
If your Age uses SDLs, then some of the logic might be broken. Otherwise it does not impact visible objects.



Hmmm, just spent 2 mins tweaking PyPRP's export script... I added a small "All as single prp, per -page textures with BuiltIn (.prp)" option.
And it looks like it's working OK.
Try to put it in PyPRP's folder (after making a backup of the old file), and run Blender.

[dendwaler]

Hmmm, just spent 2 mins tweaking PyPRP's export script... I added a small "All as single prp, per -page textures with BuiltIn (.prp)" option.

Downloaded it,
exported ....and it works in the first try!

Thx a lot Sirius, you solved in two minutes my 2 weeks of headaches.



one question, because i can not see it immediately.

Does it build this file correct for all the pages? , or only for the single page i just exported.
Otherwise i have to export all the single prp again to update the file with the correct information.

but at a first view, it does all correct at once.