| Troubleshooting: |
wglMakeCurrent() Failed
This is caused by a
failure in your graphics card's driver software. When you see
this the OpenGL 3D graphics library did not run properly. There
should be an error number
beginning with "0x" and for common causes there will be an error
name
like ERROR_INVALID_PIXEL_FORMAT giving an indication of what
failed.
If the error shown is "ERROR_???" appears send me the error
number
if you like so I can add it to the error message table for future
releases.
Normally the only
way to fix these errors is to update your graphics card's driver.
Sometimes you can get around the problem be changing the color depth,
or "bits per pixel",
of your screen, etc. If you have a VooDoo see the section below.
|
Viewports Don't Draw Correctly
The most common cause
of the viewports not properly drawing is your graphics card and it's
driver software.
The best thing you can do is to download and install the latest driver
for
your graphics card.
Anim8or uses many more
features of the OpenGL graphics library than any game does. The
primary
focus for 3D cards is gamers so graphics card makers always make sure
games
work before releasing their products. Unfortunately they don't
spend
the same amount of effort on the rest of OpenGL. They do keep
improving and releasing newer drivers, however, so chances are there's
a better one waiting for you now. |
Voodoo Graphic Card Problems
The 3DFX series of
Voodoo work with Anim8or if you have one of their good OpenGL
drivers. Many people have reported problems with the new 1.07 DX8
driver and Anim8or. They have solved this by reverting to
previous 1.06 DX7 driver. I
don't know when, or even if, this will be solved given the current
state
of 3DFX. If you have a Voodoo, I suggest that you get a copy of
both
of these drivers and keep them in a safe place. |
Can't Find Help File
Anim8or looks for a
help file named Anim8orHelp.hlp in the same directory as the
executable file Anim8or.exe. On some operating systems there was
a problem with versions of Anim8or prior to v0.62 where you could not
access the help file. |
Help File Topics Missing
The current help file
has some problems. The Index doesn't show any topics and links
don't always work. You can use the Find tab to search for
key-words, however. |
Missing Textures
1. The most
likely reason that texture are not showing up is that they are
disabled. This is true for both the working viewports and for any
rendered images. To fix the problem, select the
View->Preferences command from the menu. Make sure that
Textures is checked in both the OpenGL Workspace area and the
File Output area. You also probably want to check the MipMaps
box in the OpenGL area, too. |
| 2. Your
objects also have to have texture coordinates assigned for textures to
work. Most things built in Anim8or will have default values
assigned for you. If not, or if you import something that doesn't
have texture coordinates, you can add then with the UV tool. |
| 3. Another
reason that
your textures may be visible is your graphics card. Each card has
a maximum size that it can use to store textures. On some, such
as
the VooDoo 3000, the limit is 256x256 textels. If you reduce the
size
of these images using any paint program you can use then on such cards. |
| On rare occasions
these boxes
become un-checked for no apparent reason. I think the problem is
in
Anim8or but I have been unable to find the cause. So until I do,
if
it happens again just go back and check them again. |
Making AVI File Problems
There is a problem
with the .avi compression library in Win98 that can cause Anim8or to
report an error when you try to create an .avi movie file. You
can usually solve this by choosing a different codec (image
compressor). There are also some newer codecs available for free
on the web. Several
people have reported that the Intel Indeo codec solves this
problem.
Anim8or should not crash but should catch any error and recover.
If
not let me know and I will see if I can fix it. |
| The following
codecs should work with Anim8or v0.7 and later: |
| Codec |
Win98 |
NT 4.0 |
Win2K |
Win ME |
| Divx (Recommended) |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Intel/Lycos
Indio 4.x |
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Intel/Lycos
Indio 5.x |
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
| Cinepak |
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
Yes
|
| Microsoft
Video 1 |
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
| The Divx codecs
are of particular high quality. They are available on the web at
no charge from www.divx.com. |
| The Indeo codecs
are also fairly good. You can find them at www.ligos.com. |
Saved .an8 File Won't Load
If you can't reload a
.an8 file after you have saved it there are several things that you can
do to try
and save your work. The file is written as an ordinary text file
so
you can load it into any text editor and look at it. The most
common problem is that the file has been truncated. When this
happens you can
delete the end of the file until the {}'s are paired (to the point
where a
closing } is not indented) and the file might load.
*** Note: There was a
bug in v0.7 and earlier versions Anim8or that could cause a file that
is *exactly* one character longer than the input buffer to fail to
read. In this case simply add an extra blank line at the end to
fix the problem.
This has been fixed in v0.8. |
Transparent Object Not Transparent
Make sure that the
Transparency box is checked in both places in the View->Preferences
dialog.
The working views are only approximations of what your object will look
like when rendered. Multiple layers of transparency is too
computationally
complex to do fast enough for the working views with current 3D
hardware. To see the final result you need to make a test
rendering with File->RenderPreview. |
|