I am running into an odd problem with reactor.

Every time I try to preview the animation 3DS Max freezes up on me. And it’s not as if it’s over loaded. I tried a simple test. Two boxes, one above the other with about 3 feet distance between them. The box on top had a mass of 1. The mox below had a mass of 0 and was unyeilding. Both were mesh convex hulls. Theoretically, the box above should drop down by means of gravity and strike the box below. Simple, right?

But it even freezes on that. Any ideas why that might be?

Here are my system specs:

3DS Max 2008 (32bit)
HP Pavilion Media Center
Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600
3 GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Premium

This is driving me nuts, so any help would be REALLY appreciated.

Thanks!
Ryan

When you say freezes, does it lock up 3ds max or does it just sit there and do nothing?

If you hit the create animation instead of preview - does it do anything then?

Guy Galer
http://www.twist-edgames.com

Hi Guy,

Thanks for the response.

It actually freezes up max. As soon as a press the preview button max goes into “Not Responding” mode. And here’s another odd detail: If I restart my machine and open up max for the first time, I can use the preview function ONCE sucessfully. As soon as I try a second time, it freezes. So basically, I could use the preview function IF I restarted my machine between each attempt. Weird.

To answer your other question: I checked and it turns out I can use Create Animation all I want. That doesn’t seem to be affected.

Any ideas?

Ryan

At this point, I would suspect your graphics card is the problem.  The reactor preview is an openGL window - so it is possible that your card is not correctly supporting the openGL interface.  Not sure which card you have.  If it is a consumer card, maybe that is the problem.

On the plus side, you can still use reactor without the ability to do the preview.  The preview window is not all that helpful once the scene gets complicated.  It is good for a quick check that things are not going crazy.

Guy Galer
http://www.twist-edgames.com

Hmm… I sort of suspected that. My card is kind of weak: GeForce7350 LE. I will try playing with the driver settings to see if that fixes it. But, yes, at least I can still use the main function of reactor. Thanks for the info.

Best,
Ryan