Flamingo 5.0 unstable

Recently upgraded from Flamingo NXT (3.0) to Flamingo 5.0 and am really strugling with the new renderer. None of these were issues using Flamingo 3.0. Hope someone might be able to help.

Biggest issue is that it is no longer stable or predictable. I get regular crashes when rendering high res “final” renders. Also frequently several surfaces are ignored so the model renders, but significant parts of the model are missing (like the hull, or half the cabin, or similar major issues). Saving directly before rendering (even if no model changes, just viewport) seems to make it fail less often, but sometimes the only way to make it render properly is to close rhino and restart the program. Sometimes this doesn’t seem to work either and I am forced to reduce resolution. This was never an issue with Flamingo 3.0. Render time seems similar so I am not seeing any real advantage to the upgrade.

Other issues with 5.0 include:

Material definition is confusing compared to 3.0 definition. It is harder to find the controls I am looking for.

Material bitmaps don’t always seem to be embedded in the file. I have selected the embed option in the render options, and this seems to usually work, but often I have to find the bitmaps that were part of a material definition when I open the model on a different computer. This was much easier to control in 3.0

Decals won’t display on both sides of a surface. When using decals on a surface such as a flag that is double sided, I now have to define the decal twice (once for each side) and then try to line them up. There is no longer the option in the settings to make it double sided like there was in 3.0…this isn’t a huge deal, but adds to the workload and is certainly a step backwards. Decal control in general seems like a step backwards.

For now I am going back to using Flamingo 3.0 as 5.0 seems like a real downgrade on several fronts for my models and workflow. That said, I know that moving fwd this is the future, so I would like to figure out how to make 5.0 work better for me. Any advice would be appreciated.

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I noticed a few things too:

I noticed that while the render window is working, the model space in Rhino is locked. In the previous version it was not. So if you spotted something in your rendering that you wanted to change, you could do so while still having the visual reference available. Then you could just restart it. Now I have to close the render window to access the model and trust to memory the areas I need to adjust.

When adding decals there used to be a method to pick the background to make it invisible. For example a tag with a white background could be placed on a red surface and you would only see the text. I can’t find that in nXt 5.

I noticed that in a new session of Rhino I can’t open the Flamingo Control panel until I first start a render. It’s almost like Flamingo isn’t loading until I do. I selected :

I always see this error:

Current render plug-in set to "Flamingo nXt 5.0"
Command: _xFlamingonXtShowControlPanel
Unknown command: _xFlamingonXtShowControlPanel

Currently I can’t open it even after using the Render command. I will close and re-open Rhino and try again.

I’ve never been able to access the help file as you can see above.

Any help would be appreciated. I’d like to use the new version, but it doesn’t seem likely at this point.

Dan

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I wonder if these are left over commands from the beta version. I forgot I had that installed. I probably should have uninstalled the beta first. I uninstalled all the Flamingo related programs, reinstalled, and now it seems better. I can get to the control panel now.

I’ve spent a couple days with the new Flamingo. I really like the real time preview. I’ve had a couple of crashes with it, but overall it’s pretty useful. Now it doesn’t matter that the model is locked, because if I’m using the real time preview I can make changes live. That’s way better than nXt 3!

Tomorrow morning I’m going to dig into the decal issue posted above. There’s probably a better way of doing it that I will discover.

Dan

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I found what I needed. My only current complaint is that the real time render crashes fairly regularly. When it doesn’t, it’s very handy to have.

Dan

@JohnM, @scottd: can you jump in here?

We are looking into this. I see there are some crash reports on this. It will take us some time to determine what is in the reports.

Sorry to hear you are having problems, it sounds like you are running into a bug we discovered in the Rhino SDK after releasing Flamingo. This bug required a Rhino 5.0 SR13 service release we have been testing and slowly pushing out. The update is available here .

I also noticed you are accessing Flamingo via the Render menu, this is a result of a very old Flamingo RUI file which must have been loaded by an early beta. The current Flamingo uses a RUI file that adds a Flamingo top level menu like this:

The correct menu should get automatically loaded by Rhino but can be manually loaded by going to Options/Toolbars and opening the “%APPDATA%\McNeel\Rhinoceros\5.0\Plug-ins\Flamingo nXt 5.0 (fd53f8c4-546d-47d1-8820-e66c97645a97)\settings\Flamingo.nXt.rui” file. Please close any previously loaded, old Flamingo RUI files first.

In addition I would recommend running the FlamingoCheckForUpdates command to make sure your Flamingo is up to date. You can manually download the current Flamingo service release here.

Has SR13 been officially released, or is it still a release candidate?

Thanks,

Dan

Usually a RC becomes the official SR when no issues are found. It is not normally a separate release.

Yes, but I’ve got over 120 installations to deal with here. I want the final product (at least a statement that the RC is final) before I spend the time to update all these computers.

Dan

The current plan is to have one more build of SR13 then release it if there are no further issues.

Okay, thanks. I will wait for that one before I deploy it company wide.

Dan