Lately I have been working with images inside Rhino and I have been having a really really bad time.
Context: I am working on Dropbox, placing images from a Dropbox folder into my Rhino workspace. The Rhino file is also saved on Dropbox. The images have many different file paths and are not located in the same folder of the Rhino file.
Problem: One day an embedded files folder appeared on my Dropbox. Didn’t gave it much attention. Another day, after an unusual long saving time, I got a message inside Rhino: ‘You are attempting to embbed ‘x’ MB of support files rhino’. I clicked no.
I kept adding images to my Rhino file. I then discovered some images where pointing to the Embedded Folder and some were pointing to their original Dropbox path. What a mess!
I decided to start fresh.
Expected: I don’t want Rhino to be slow and have infinite saving times. Thus, I want my images linked, not embedded. Also, I don’t want an Embedded Folder, I want all my images to maintain their original path.
When I am done, I want an option to export or ‘save as’ a copy of my Rhino file + the Embedded Folder, this would enable me to share my Rhino file + the images/textures, pretty much what an InDesign package does.
Is this already possible with Rhino?
Also, how does one manage links inside Rhino? Do I need to check materials one by one? I would like to see a list/table of all my links, with their respective paths, and state (missing, ok, etc)
Hello - I believe there is a fix in 7.3 (should be available now or very soon if you set the update frequncy in Options > Updates and statistics page to ‘Service release candidate’) that may help - lets start with that.
I haven’t upgraded to Rhino 7 just yet. But I don’t really care about the bug, unless it changes all the paths of my files from their original location to the embedded files folder… and there is no way of going back. Does it do that?
For now I am working on my new file and so far no embedded files folder has been created nor has the ‘you are attempting to embbed x MB’ message appeared.
Okay, I saved a back up just in case, with ‘save as’. and then re opened the original. No folder for now.
Good. Now… you surely don’t talk much Pascal. I know we started talking a little about this on another thread, but I just want to understand how it works, and also, I was hoping my ‘Expected’ comments could be taken into account for future features.
So, back to understanding: By default all textures placed into Rhino work as links right? It is a mystery why my files start lagging then…
Is there an option to change between embedded and linked, as with blocks?
My understanding is that Rhino always embeds them (*) but needs the link to them on disk somewhere to be able to work with them. This is done so that 3rd party rendering plug-ins can have access to them.
(*) RH-58249 now (from 7.3) gives you an option to disable embedding either per file or globally. If you disable that, the link is the only thing that remains.
When an image that is linked to is no longer present, Rhino opens the Missing image files dialgo box that lets you find out where the image is used and lets you find a replacement on disk.
-wim
I just tried the new option to never embed in 7.3. It works as expected, except it doesn’t work with materials from the Vray material library. When i save, exit and reopen the file it complains it cant find a texture in the texture cache. It renders ok, but its missing the texture to display in rendered viewport and comes up grey there. Maybe its because these materials use the TX format that Rhino cant read?
However that problem doesnt exist with vray materials that i created with my own maps.
Hello - if Vray has a textures folder, see if adding a path to that in Options > FIles > Search paths will help. I am not sure it will - I’d be surprised if that applied to Vray, but worth a try.
Yes there is a folder with textures for the vray materials library, but these textures are in TX format. It looks like vray generates the jpeg textures for the viewport on the fly somehow.
We made some renaming inside the Dropbox folders and now all my images are missing…
Why does this happen if the files are embedded? Shouldn’t Rhino generate the embedded files folder now?
Also, suppose the only solution is to re-link the correct path… why isn’t Rhino smart enough to look inside the folders and automatically find the missing files like InDesign does? I have + 50 links and going material by material correcting the path is quite cumbersome.
Thank you Wim. I used this to relink my images back, one by one. It was faster than going material through material. It would nice to always have access to this dialog, not only when images are missing.
Now, for this not to happen again, and taking precautions in spite of more than probable renaming in the future, I want to force Rhino to copy all the files I link to it into a Embbeded Files Folder. How do I force Rhino to create this folder?
Or what other workflow do you guys recommend to not break links when working on a Rhino with linked files on the cloud that constantly get renamed and reorganized?
Edit: isn’t there a script to copy all links files into a folder in directory and have the links change to that path instead? Like an InDesign package.
@johnc - do you think you can make a batch image replacer tool, similar to the one that shows up at file open time if there are missing files, but as its own command to act on all or selected texture files?
Hello - Rhino gets the texture files from a folder, the embedded files folder is (should) be created only if the textures cannot be found on the computer.
So, you’re saying they’re not actually embedded in 3dm?
That can’t be true, 'cause if I delete this folder and open the file with them embedded, the images are still there.
the fix is in.
