SGI Cosmo Software 1997 May

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- 1 - 5. _K_n_o_w_n__P_r_o_b_l_e_m_s__a_n_d__W_o_r_k_a_r_o_u_n_d_s 5.1 _C_o_s_m_o__W_o_r_l_d_s The current release has some limitations, as described in the following sections. 5.1.1 _N_o_d_e_-_S_p_e_c_i_f_i_c__P_r_o_b_l_e_m_s This section describes problems specific to certain VRML 2.0 Nodes and their associated editors. 5.1.1.1 _N_o_d_e__N_a_m_e_s__a_n_d____1__S_u_f_f_i_x_e_s +o Nodes name suffixes with an underscore-digit suffix, such as "_1", are not preserved upon reading. Cosmo Worlds, as outlined in the VRML spec, uses _1 suffixes to differentiate between instances. If you read in a file with nodes with such suffixes, you will not see those suffixes once in the system. Change your suffixes to use a dash ("-") instead of an underscore ("_"). (449198) 5.1.1.2 _T_e_x_t_u_r_e_s__a_n_d__t_h_e__T_e_x_t_u_r_e__E_d_i_t_o_r +o The Texture Editor preview window will not reflect changes made by other editors in the main scene (has a local copy). This includes any texture image edits, texture mapping changes (done in Pep Texture Applicator), as well as material or geometry changes. To see the changes in the Texture Editor's preview window, you must re-select the object in the main scene. (358948, 421549) +o If you load a .wrl file with a reference to a texture image that can't be resolved, Cosmo Worlds will display your object with no texture. However, when you select that object, the image editor buttons in the Media palette will be active. Choosing one will cause CosmoWorlds to start the external editor and point it at a non-existent file, generating an error. As a workaround, open the texture editor and replace the image, or ignore the error until you can fetch the remote texture. - 2 - +o VRML 2.0 does not define how browsers should map textures onto indexed face sets without texture coordinates. To guarantee that your texture are mapped consistently in various VRML browsers, always use the PEP Texture Applicator to generate explicit texture coordinates and make sure to press the Apply button even if the mapping looks the same. (424455) In rev 1.0.2 the Pep Texture Applicator default (planar) mapping has been improved and might look different than the main window. Again, use this tool to generate explicit texture coordinates. (478247) 5.1.1.3 _V_i_e_w_p_o_i_n_t_s__a_n_d__t_h_e__V_i_e_w_p_o_i_n_t__E_d_i_t_o_r +o There is no way to re-order Viewpoints in the viewpoint editor, since it might involve re-ordering some objects in your scene graph. Use the Outline Editor for this. The current order can be seen in the browser by doing a preview or by opening the Select list in the viewpoint editor. (384985) +o The Home view is not saved when switching between viewers (Examiner, Walk, and Working Views). Authors can create Viewpoints (with no description to prevent browser from displaying them to the user) to create permanent saved views. (299733) +o Renaming a Viewpoint (in the Outline editor or Viewpoint editor) will not automatically fix anchors that might refer to it. (383767) 5.1.1.4 _E_x_t_r_u_s_i_o_n_s__a_n_d__t_h_e__E_x_t_r_u_s_i_o_n__E_d_i_t_o_r +o If you create an Extrusion Node with the Extrusion Editor and then turn on culling with the Normal Doctor, it is possible that the caps will not cull correctly. There are two workarounds. The first is to turn culling off. If culling is imperative, then you can convert the model to a PEP, open the Polygon Builder plugin, and reverse the normals of the polygons that are culling incorrectly. The disadvantage of the second workaround is that when you convert the model into a PEP you lose the ability to edit the object as a primitive Extrusion; the geometry is converted to an IndexedFaceSet. (401827) - 3 - +o You can animate the spine field of an extrusion using the Extrusion Editor in concert with the Keyframe Animation Editor. However, unpredictable animation will result if you change the number of points in the spine. It is best not to change the number of points in the spine after adding the Extrusion as a member of an animation. (440319) 5.1.2 _P_a_t_c_h_e_s +o Patch 1932 (or a patch which supercedes that patch) dramatically speeds up the cache building and plug-in startup time for Cosmo Worlds. It can reduce the initial cache building from minutes to tens of seconds, and make individual plug-in loading nearly instantaneous. This patch also allows your LD_LIBRARY_PATH to be longer than around 100 characters. The runtime linker (rld) shipped with IRIX 6.2 may core dump if your LD_LIBRARY_PATH is too long. Cosmo Worlds attempts to check for this condition and prints a warning. (337982) +o You must install Patch 1537 (or a patch which supercedes that patch) to work around a bug in the File Alteration Monitor shipped with IRIX 6.2MR. The visible symptom requiring this patch was that changes saved from Helper Applications were not always noticed by Cosmo Worlds. This patch supercedes Patches 1258 & 1456, which also fixed this problem. (362713) +o You must install Patch 1528 (or a patch which supercedes that patch) to update your Digital Media libraries to allow Cosmo Player to render movie textures and compressed sounds properly. 5.1.3 _I_M_P_A_C_T_-_S_p_e_c_i_f_i_c__P_r_o_b_l_e_m_s +o On IMPACT systems, you must install either Patch 1447 (for IRIX 6.2) or Patch 1332 (for IRIX 5.3) to update your OpenGL graphics library in order for Cosmo Worlds and Cosmo Player to properly render VRML 2.0 files. +o On systems with Impact graphics, textured objects that have transparency might appear as dashed lines in the texture editor or the main window after being selected or deselected. No data is lost. Save, exit, and reopen your file to resume viewing the texture. - 4 - (389643, 442462) 5.1.4 _G_e_n_e_r_a_l +o The Japanese localization of Cosmo Worlds covers the main application only. There are some areas within the application which were not properly localized, such as the Help menu and the Packager, because those resources were not part of the main application. In addition, the online documentation, the Quick Reference Card, the Quick Start Training Video, and the VRML 2.0 Handbook have not been translated to Japanese for this release. +o The Primitive Counter function does not count triangles contained within Inlines or inside PEP objects during PEP editing mode. Exit PEP edit mode to get an accurate count. There is no workaround for not counting within Inlines other than to use the "Fold Inline into main scene" button on the Inline Editor or to open the Inline separately. (472898) +o Due to a bug in the current release of PC NFS, Cosmo Worlds will hang while trying to work on files mounted from a PC. This includes opening files from, saving files to, and browsing such directories. This problem has been reported to the manufacturer of the PC NFS software. There is no known workaround: acquire the latest version of PC NFS to avoid this problem. (440264) +o On some Indigo^2 R10000 Extreme systems and on some Indy R4x000 configurations, graphics performance can sometimes lag dramatically. There is no known workaround at this time other than to downgrade to Cosmo Worlds 1.0.1. (483402) +o On slower graphics systems, the scene may redraw up to three times after manipulation/viewing stops. There is no workaround at this time. (400846) +o While memory use has been significantly reduced in the 1.0.1 release, Cosmo Worlds can use significant amounts of memory, and in some circumstances may cause your system to run out of swap space. If this happens, you will probably get a system error dialog. Running out of swap space may cause the application to crash, may prevent you from launching a browser for previewing, or may prevent you from launching the Packager. If this occurs, consider closing down other applications or - 5 - adding more swap space. You may also find that saving your file and restarting Cosmo Worlds with fewer plug- ins open will lessen the memory requirements of Cosmo Worlds. To add swap space, choose "System->System Manager" from the Toolchest. On 6.2, you can launch the swap manager from the "Administration Tools" panel of the system manager. On 6.3, selecting "System Performance" from the system manager will guide you through adding swap space. On either system, you can look at the man page for "swap". +o Not all Sensors and Nodes have Creator plug-ins for directly creating those nodes. Open the Sample Data Gallery to import those nodes which cannot be directly authored graphically, and edit them using the Outline Editor. Multiple field editing, however, is limited to editing existing values and not adding or deleting values. +o The Hide Unselected Objects operation does not work well with partially-selected groups. For example, if you have a group of two objects, one of which is selected (using Select Child), and then you Hide Unselected Objects, the entire group will remain displayed. To hide part of a group, select the part to be hidden and then use Hide Selected Objects. (375933) +o The current selection policy (Select Highest or Select Lowest) has no effect on the Select All operation. Select All always operates on the top-level objects. (385073) +o If a group contains local non-geometric nodes, such as an animation group, Script nodes, NavigationInfo nodes, and the like, then those nodes will be deleted without warning if the group is ungrouped. (Those nodes are considered part of the group, and are removed when the group is removed.) (432905) +o When snapping an object to the snapping target, the Shift key can be held down to constrain translation to a single dimension. However, in some in orientations, using the Shift key may disable snapping entirely in that direction. (423448) +o If you log out or manually kill the program, CosmoWorlds will not prompt you to save your current file. Please save before killing the program if you wish your changes to be preserved. (381436) - 6 - +o Image editor helper application interaction (for PhotoShop, XV, and ImageWorks) is a little limited in the sense that Cosmo Worlds can't pass a file to a running version of a Helper app. You'll need to fire off a new instance of a Helper app to edit a second texture. Because Photoshop uses a very large amount of memory, it actually asks whether it should really fire off another instance if Photoshop is already running on your machine. +o When you change the current time in the Keyframe Editor (by dragging the time slider or playing, for example), some other editors will not necessarily show the interpolated values. You may have to deselect and reselect the object, or open and close the editor to see the new values. This is not the case with the Outline Editor, it always shows the current values. (437230) +o If you create an object and then edit the file with a text editor so that its size is extremely small, say .00000001 meters in all directions, and then read it back in and attempt to View All or create other objects, CosmoWorlds may eventually crash due to floating point precision issues. Make sure you use reasonable sizes for all your objects. Most browsers will not handle 8 significant digits of precision, so set your object size appropriately. (381984, 309813) +o The Precision Placement Panel is unable to properly scale global Sound nodes. If you use the Precision Placement Panel to adjust the placement of a top-level (global) Sound node, you may get infinitely small values placed in the node's transform fields, which may eventually cause Cosmo Worlds to crash due to accumulated floating point precision errors. Avoid this by always creating a Parent Group over the Sound node before adjusting its Transform values. (441579) +o If your scene is scaled very small, then if you Shift- scale when creating a new primitive object, you may find that the scale of the object is extremely large. The workaround is to first do a uniform scale, then switch to <Shift>-scale mode. For example, [a] click on the cube creator plugin, [b] position the cursor where you want the object, [c] click drag the object to give it an overall uniform size, [d] keeping the mouse down, depress <Shift> and continue to drag in order to stretch the object. (425023) - 7 - +o If you have both an evaluation and a permanent license in your /var/flexlm/license.dat file, the first one matching the product will be found. Thus, if the evaluation one occurs first, you will continue to see the expiration notification until the evaluation license expires, at which point the permanent one will be used. To avoid this problem once you've obtained your permanent license, edit the /var/flexlm/license.dat file and either remove the evaluation one or make sure the permanent one occurs first. See Chapter 6 for more information about licenses. +o Iconic Objects (Lights, Sounds, Viewpoints, Proximity and Visibility Sensors) may not be positioned where you click when pasting. Instead, the icon (and therefore the corresponding node) will jump to it's original copied location. You will need to move it again to position it correctly. To select Iconic Objects which are not being displayed properly, you may find it easiest to use the Outline Editor. (439116) +o In rare cases, the color-per-vertex editor will edit the entire object all at once instead of coloring faces and vertices on an individual basis. The workaround is to reselect the object and try again (413965?). +o CosmoWorlds does not handle fields that have multiple URLs correctly. It only fetches the first URL. If this fails, the data will not be displayed and an error message will apear. (440016) 5.1.4.1 _T_h_e__M_a_n_i_p_u_l_a_t_o_r +o If you select an object that is skinny in one or two dimensions, the locate highlighting of the manipulator's translation faces may be incorrect; the picking will be offset as well and it may be difficult to click-drag the skinny faces. (303551) +o The manipulator does its best to stay a 'good size' on screen no matter how small the selected object may be in the viewport. This is done automagically and there are some cases where it does a poor job, as when you have a long skinny object viewed from the end. Workaround: Rotate the point of view to a more 3/4 view and the resizing should make the manip more usable. (384227) - 8 - +o The scaleOrientation field may change even when you think it shouldn't. For example, simply deselecting and reselecting the object will cause radical fluctuations in the value of this field. This is not a serious problem because it only happens in cases where the aggregate transformation matrix is unaffected by this field value change (an example is when the scale of the object is a uniform scale); in these cases there are many values that will yield the same result. However it will cause dirty lights to go on in the Keyframe Editor, if you have a Transform line open down to the field level. As a workaround to this problem, dirty scaleOrientation lines are never propagated up to higher level lines. (391096) +o When using <control>-drag on the rotation handles of the manipulator to move the center of rotation, motion is constrained to either 2 or 1 (if shift is down) directions. But snapping occurs along all 3 dimensions in all cases. In a future release, the object will instead snap in only the directions of motion (433656). 5.1.4.2 _F_i_l_e__R_e_a_d_i_n_g__a_n_d__I_m_p_o_r_t_i_n_g +o No legality checking program exists to verify that VRML 2.0 files contain semantically valid data. Many of the upgraders and translators do not fully check either, so if you take for example a bad VRML 1.0 file, and convert it to VRML 2.0, it could cause errors or crashes in CosmoWorlds or CosmoPlayer. (363203). +o Cosmo Worlds will refuse to read files which contain only prototype definitions, even if they are spec- compliant. If you create a file which contains only a prototype definition, then upon next reading the file, CosmoWorlds will issue an error message that the VRML data may be invalid (and consequently does not load the file.) As a workaround, add another piece of VRML data to the file. (441246, 438442) +o #foo style comments are lost when a file is read into CosmoWorlds and saved back out. Use a WorldInfo node instead of comments, and you can use the Outline Editor to edit the text. (400046). +o The Paste menu in the Edit menu item isn't greyed out when the app starts up, even if there is no VRML in the - 9 - clipboard. (362831). +o Files containing relative URL file references may cause problems in some cases. For example, if you import a file from a directory other than the directory containing the current world, and that file contains a relative URL, that URL will not be resolved correctly during a Preview or a Save operation. Also, if you save a world that contains relative URL file references into a different dictionary, those references will not be resolved correctly. A workaround is to convert such references to absolute file references manually. (479831) 5.1.4.3 _O_u_t_l_i_n_e__E_d_i_t_o_r +o As of 1.0.2, the Outline Editor shows nodes without fields to represent values under a Script or Prototype that are instances of an ancestor of that Script or Prototype. Moving the Script or Prototype from under that ancestor does not make the empty node become full again. The workaround is to close all instances of the Outline Editor and open a new one. (480006) +o Directional lights appear in the outline editor as children of a "DirLeakLight" node. This node is like a Transform, but allows the light to leak out of the node and illuminate its siblings, unlike the Transform node. (423079). +o The Outline Editor has rules for which routes can be created. One of its rules prohibit routes from under an inline to anywhere except under that same inline. A bug in this logic makes the outline unable to route from outside an inline to the Transform above that inline. The workaround here is to create a parent Transform above the Transform containing the inline, and route to that new parent Transform. Similarly, the outline will let you create a route from the Transform above the inline to the scene inside the inline. This route will not be present in the saved file. (437109). 5.1.4.4 _P_E_P__M_o_d_e_l_e_r +o When PEP editing a transparent model, and "Nice Transparency" is selected on the View menu, the selection feedback will inherit the object's - 10 - transparency. This make it difficult to edit an object that is nearly transparent. As a workaround, simply turn off "Nice Transparency" via the View menu. (424223) +o If your PEP model has explicit normals, these normals will not be changed or updated in any way when you edit the PEP model. So if you move points, the surface shading can get very strange. Workaround: bring up "the Normal Doctor" plugin and move the crease angle slider. This will remove the explicit normals and calculate new normals that will make sense for the model. (368544) +o If your PEP model is in an unevenly scaled transform space, then the PEP modeling tools exhibit the following poor behaviors: First, the PEP jack manipulator will not 'hug the surfaces' of all polygons in the model. For example, the rotation axis will not always stick out of the surface along the normal direction. Second, when you click-drag to translate a point edge or polygon, the plane of translation will not always match the plane that you clicked on. Both of these errors stem from poor calculation of normal directions within an unevenly scaled space. Note that if the polygon in question is parallel to one of the xy, yz, or xz planes, then these problems will not arise. Workaround: Put the model into an evenly scaled space. You can stretch the model in PEP-editing mode by selecting all the points and then stretching them using the PEP Jack manipulator. This will fix the problem because the PEP Jack manipulator changes the values of the coordinates within the model instead of applying a scale to the Transforms that affect the model. (386464) +o In the PEP modeler, the 'Chip Off' and 'Extrude' plugins do not create unique texture coordinate entries for the newly created points. Therefore, when you apply a texture you may find 'smearing' where the same texture coordinate is used across a whole section of your model. The workaround is to go into the PEP texture applicator plugin and [1] get rid of the unwanted instancing between texture coordinates and [2] put the texture coordinates exactly where you want them. In order to break the instancing of texture coordinates, pick a polygon in the right window and then select 'Break Instancing' from the Edit menu of the plugin. From then on you can edit the texture coordinates separately by dragging them in the left window. (367712) - 11 - +o If you are in an Working View (orthographic plane view) and have the PEP Jack manipulator oriented so that the scaling axis comes directly out of the screen, the scale knobs become unusable since all points on the line of motion for scaling will map to the same pixel on screen. Workaround: change to a perspective view or a different ortho view. (385304) +o If you are in an ortho view you may be tempted to <control>+drag the translation plane of the Manipulator in order to move the object toward/away from you. This will not work, however; the line of motion sticks straight out of the screen, so all points of the line fall upon the same pixel of the screen. The Manipulator can't deal with this and will move the object to horrible, unspeakable locations. Workarounds: First, if the object is lost, don't forget that you can use Undo to put the object where it was originally. Second, you can change to a different Working View or the Free View and then move the object in the desired direction. (399492) +o There are cases when you may not be able to properly pick the handles of the PEP rotation/scaling tool. This problem occurs occasionally when the handles stick out beyond the boundary of the red square which frames the object while you are in PEP editing mode. The workaround is to adjust the view so that the handles lie within the boundaries of the red square. (406502). 5.1.4.5 _S_o_u_n_d__E_d_i_t_o_r +o To create a truly ambient sound, you must set the minimum and maximum ranges for the sound to encompass your entire scene. Since the sound range thumbwheel only goes up to 1000, for large worlds you may have to type higher values into the Sound Editor range boxes or min and max range fields in the Outline Editor. +o Selecting "Show Ranges" in the Sound Editor will show a wireframe representation of the minimum and maximum range of the sound. If you want to see this wireframe representation of the sound range in the player, you can enter "debug" as the first five characters of the description field of the AudioClip. This will not work for a Sound node with a MovieTexture source, and the ranges will not show on any player other than the SGI CosmoPlayer. - 12 - +o The sound node will not show correct minimum/maximum sound ranges (wireframe spheres) when the center of the manilator is moved around. The workaround is to create a transform above the sound and use the manipulator to modify the transform instead. (441450) 5.1.4.6 _S_c_r_i_p_t__E_d_i_t_o_r +o If a text edit session is open in the script editor, and you choose "New" from the main menu, the currently edited field is not removed. Deleting the field, then undoing that deletion will cause a core dump. As a workaround, either close the text edit session before performing a "New" operation, or refrain from editing the orphaned field. (438452) +o If the interface type of a field is changed from within the text edit session, and that field had route connections, then upon saving the text edit session, the field is changed and the route is correctly removed. However, during undo, the field is put back the way it was, but the routes to the original field are not reconnected. As a workaround, change the interface type of a field using the "Edit" button for the field. This will correctly remove the routes so undo can replace them. (438440) +o If you add an SFNode field to the script, the script editor will set the default value to NULL. If you change the value, the script editor will silently change it back to NULL. (480001) 5.2 _C_o_s_m_o__P_a_c_k_a_g_e The current implementation of Cosmo Package (invoked by choosing the "Package..." menu choice under the "File" menu in Cosmo Create or Cosmo Worlds) has a few limitations. Here is the list: 5.2.1 _G_e_n_e_r_a_l 1. Due to a bug in PC NFS, Cosmo Package will hang while trying to work on files mounted from a PC. This includes packaging files from, packaging files to, and browsing such directories. This problem has been reported to the manufacturer of the PC NFS software. There is no known workaround. (440264) - 13 - 2. The Packager handles only HTML, VRML 2.0 Draft 3, VRML 2.0, and Cosmo Worlds files. All other document types are treated as "black boxes" -- they aren't searched for references to other local documents, they aren't optimized, their references aren't patched -- they are merely moved to the packaging directory. This will be most noticeable when you package HTML documents containing Java Applets. Only the main ".class" file will be moved. None of the supporting files will be moved. 3. Cosmo Package relies heavily on the File Typing Rules (FTRs) which are installed as part of your desktop. If files are not being typed properly, they may not be packaged properly. On each line claiming that a file is being discovered or packaged, the packager shows the file's FTR type. If the right thing isn't happening to the files, check that the FTR looks reasonable. To check this, select the icon on the desktop and choose "Get Info" from the Selected menu on the System Toolchest. Look at the "Type" field on the resulting dialog box. If it doesn't look appropriate, please talk to your system administrator to have your FTRs checked. 4. Cosmo Package strips whitespace from directory index filenames, mappings, and trusted references. This may make it difficult to use directories containing whitespace in their names. 5. Package directories created by the beta version of this tool will not be recognized by this version of the packager. 5.2.2 _V_R_M_L 5.2.2.1 _U_R_L__d_i_s_c_o_v_e_r_y The packager searches for all URLs found in "URL" fields of the various node types. It does not check to see what values might flow to those fields through routes. For instance, if a script generates URLs and routes them to URL fields, the packager will not discover these URLs. Similarly, if you have a PROTO and route one of its event-ins to the URL field of a texture node, the URLs in given in uses of those protos will not be found by the packager. A partial work around for these blind-spots is to use those URLs elsewhere. For instance, put the URLs in the texture node of a shape which you arrange to never display. (One way - 14 - to avoid showing the shape is to put it under a Switch and set the Switch's _w_h_i_c_h_C_h_o_i_c_e field to -1). This will at least ensure that the URLs are discovered by the packager and that their files are packaged. It will also patch the "fake" uses of the URLs based on where those files are mapped to. It is only a partial solution because you will still have to check that the URLs you use in your scripts and routes will properly refer to the files once they've been packaged. 5.2.2.2 _M_e_d_i_a__C_o_n_v_e_r_s_i_o_n The VRML packager's media conversions are done "best effort". If you are not happy with the conversion done by the packager, you may do the conversion yourself in your authored files or you may or leave the files alone. Here are the known problems: 1. Movies +o If you request that a movie be converted to MPEG, it may have its size changed by the converter. To avoid this resizing, don't request automatic conversion of your movie files. 2. Image textures with alpha channels The VRML packager may drop alpha channel data in some cases if you ask it to do conversions for you (407987). Notably: +o (PNG --> GIF) We allow this, but any alpha data in the PNG is likely to be dropped. (Ask yourself... why are you converting "away from" a media format which all VRML 2.0 browsers are required to support?) +o (GIF --> PNG) and (GIF --> JPEG) We allow these conversions, but alpha data in your GIFs will be lost. 3. Audio Cosmo Package won't convert from audio files out of MIDI or WAV format. - 15 - 5.2.2.3 _F_i_l_e__S_u_f_f_i_x_e_s 1. Using the "Use .wrl suffix for VRML files" makes the packager propose new filenames for VRML files which do not end in ".wrl". Even with this option enabled, you can still override these recommended names with the mappings. Doing so is not recommended. Without this suffix, Netscape Navigator probably won't recognize your content as VRML. 5.2.3 _H_T_M_L 1. Image map files which are referenced other than as image maps may not be properly discovered and packaged. We don't expect this to cause a problem since normal servers won't server image map files unless they are being used as image maps. (420237)