I have spent over a hundred grueling, mind numbing hours trying to figure out what is wrong with Brazil/Rhino !!!
I have ironed out these problems and found some work-a-rounds (very time consuming though). Some bugs have to be avoided entirely.
Reviewing the forums reveals these are old known issues!!!
I have been able to replicate the problems on a laptop and a desktop to eliminate possible causes with openGL/Video drivers.
These issues along with many small bugs have been around since the beta days.
I have the latest Rhino and Brazil updates.
No updates for Brazil in two Years despite these obvious known problems?
Who is minding the store? Is no one at McNeel checking and maintaining Brazil?
I paid a lot of money for Brazil and it seems to be poorly supported.
I’m talking about the use of Displacements and Textures(procedural) and image based while rendering with Brazil.
These show stoppers cause crashes, lock-ups, instabilities requiring Rhino restarts and system reboots.
Any Idea when this will be FIXED???
Have you sent in any files with specific steps to reproduce the issues you’re seeing to tech@mcneel.com ? If not, can you do that for individual issues and I’ll make sure that they get filed for the Brazil developers. I can also try and suggest other techniques or tweaks to what you’re currently doing to try and help. @andy is the head of our Brazil development team and he’ll need to say whether any specific issue is on deck to be addressed or otherwise. Without the specifics and a sample file to reproduce the problem it’s impossible to say though, so please provide files and the steps needed to show what you’re seeing.
Sorry for the hassle and the problems you’ve had. Let me know if I can help more as a Brazil user or to make sure the issues are filed clearly for the developers. If you have links to old forum posts that have sample files and show the issues you’re seeing, please send us those as well.
Hi Brian, Ok…You can’t edit a material while a displacement is applied to the geometry that is shared with that material. turn the displacement off first then edit
Do not use a Displacement map in the materials settings under surface deformation (will crash Rhino). In fact only apply Displacement at the command line. Turn it off and on with the object properties dialog to edit a material.
Texture size seems to be more like a percentage of the geometry size its assigned to as opposed to drawing units. I have no idea what this feature is actually doing. If You scale the object the texture is assigned to the texture tile to drawing units ratio seems to change by an unpredictable amount. Two of the same sized objects with the same texture applied to both can have different sized textures.
I will post more as time allows…
I’m able to edit a material applied to an object which is using a displacement render mesh here. Can you provide a file that shows what you’re reporting? I’m thinking there must be something in your setup that differs from what I’m trying here.
Render time displacement is working here as well within a material. This is slower in my opinion than using a displacement render mesh but it may have memory benefits at a guess. Regardless though, I’m not seeing a crash with this style of displacement either so there may be something specific to the texture map used or some other setting in the file that is causing the problem on your end. Please provide a file with the texture maps embedded if possible and I’ll make sure the exact case gets filed.
Can you provide a file that shows what you mean? I think you’re talking about the mapping parameters for a texture within a material but you may also be referring to the texture mapping section of an object’s properties. These two controls offer different ways to adjust a textures repeat and mapping method and they can work together too.
Thanks for any time you can spend in explaining more and sharing files. If they are confidential just say so when sending over to tech@mcneel.com You can also say for Brian J. in the notes when uploading.
lets start with the first one, use a noise texture for displacement, apply it at the command line then apply a material to the same object. see if the material is editable.
If this works for You do You have any idea what may be wrong?
Do you know of any problems with any Nvidia cards and or drivers? I have a Geforce GTX 470 1.2GB
You need to do as Brian has asked and post your file, how can anyone be of help if they have to guess at what your problem is. I have been running Brazil for at least two years with no problems what so ever.
All my best … Danny
Brian, does this look in order?
And could you please delete lopacki’s superfluous post?
Win7 Pro sp1
I7 940 2.93GHz
6GB ram
Nvidia geForce GTX470 1.2GB, Driver Ver. 335.23
Yes, this works for me. Here is the file I just tested
Displacement_with_BAM.3dm (345.7 KB)
Please upload a 3dm that does not work for you when trying to edit a material applied to an object using a displacement render mesh.
Regarding the OpenGL settings, that looks fine with the exception that the driver is a bit old. If your issue is that the display is not updating and not that there is an issue with actually rendering in Brazil, make sure your display mode (you may be using Rendered) is set to the defaults in Options>View>Display Modes. Does that help? If not, and my latest hunch is correct that this is a display issue, try updating the driver for the GPU.
Sorry! I should have said that the Brazil render does not update to the new material edits until you disable then re-enable the displacement. The material thumbnail, neon, and the render view-port will update the material as you make material edits.
I will provide the files and links you request tonight…Also update the vid. and oGl drivers… Thanks Brian
Thanks for explaining more. I filed this as http://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/BR-2076 which is public for future reference. Hopefully this can be addressed by the developers soon.
BrianJ can i ask you ? … can i create displacement bigger as 100% 
In brazil is : 
And i dont know how big is 100% in px or mm. In v-ray is this :
It is more logic in pix.
Can you explain it, please how you do.
peter
To control displacement based on the file units use a displacement render mesh versus render time displacement. Here’s a video tutorial on displacement render meshes in Rhino 5 for Windows.
If Vray doesn’t see the displacement render mesh you can use ExtractRenderMesh and hide the original surface… but I believe they see it now in their latest version. Render time displacement set up within a material maxes out at a 100% but I suppose editing the texture used to increase contrast may give you a bit more. Personally I use custom render meshes and adjust the height as an object property.
OK, and moving right along…Could you PLEASE move petermasek to his own thread???
I think this is a rhino issue,
Keep turning up the quality and turning up (by lowering value) the Refine sensitivity until You get a mesh limit warning, then increase the mesh limit to avoid the warning and continue to turn up the quality and sensitivity. Watch Rhino magically become unstable, slow, lock-up and crash your system to the point you have to unplug the power and reboot windows “normally”…
Please email tech@mcneel.com if you’d like to discuss anything in private. Although it is debatable that Peter’s comment or Danny’s is in direct correlation to the subjects you’ve raised here, I don’t consider them inappropriate or unrelated.
Thanks again for the bug report and please send any other files/steps to reproduce anything else that’s getting in your way.
This sounds like a memory issue. How much RAM is in this system and are you using the 64 bit version of Rhino 5? I generally only go to the High setting and a refine sensitivity of 1. For the mesh memory limit I generally don’t go above 1024. In the video I think I cover a bunch of other tricks too like blurring the source image versus increase the poly count. The size of the object being displaced, it’s render mesh, the source texture, the system specs and the settings used all play a part.
Its not about privacy, I don’t want anybody’s tech support issue turning into a long drawn out discussion and stepping on MY tech support issues. I have more crashy show stoppers that I want to deal with one at a time. Whats the big deal anyway? it was just a request…
Win7 Pro sp1
I7 940 2.93GHz
6GB ram
Nvidia geForce GTX470 1.2GB, Driver Ver. 335.23
64bit Rhino
What I’m doing and what I need is efficient realistic water bodies/surfaces ie ocean, lake, pond, tropical, river, etc. with varying degrees of waves and ripples.
I’m trying all My options for water surface geometry. That will refract, reflect, receive and distort shadows and do caustics reflective and refractive.
Displacements are a very powerful feature of Rhino/Brazil. I use them a lot for adding detail to My drawings but when I need clean sharp displacements It’s impossible because this high setting crashes My computer! Why is it there if its perceived to be “not needed”? Look at other cad packages ability to do nice displacements…this high setting needs to get fixed!
Or put in an error trap to prevent us from going into a time consuming system crash and reboot…