I first wanted to say, that I have been using XSI (build version: 6 Mod Tool.2007.0814) to complete some homeworks for an undergraduate game design and studio class, and XSI has proven to be of great help.  Never having used a 3D modeler, I was starting form from the basics.  I really think the early tutorials were one thing that XSI did a great job of.  they were simple to watch and learn and I was able to pick it up most of the basics afer watching the first few videos.  The main problem I had was the fact that XSI Mod Tool was very unreliable, it seemed to freeze up every 20-30 minutes.  This caused some problems because there were a few times when I lost a good bit of work and this is an unfortunate thing about working on a computer.  I am currently running Windows Vista,  with a Intel Core 2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13 GHz processor with 2045 mb of RAM, and XSI is one of the main programs that just hates running on Vista.  I talked to the class, and everyone else seemed to have the same problem.  Is anyone else experienceing the same thing? I mean I checked the forums and it looks like nobody else is having a problem.  Let me know if you know anything, Thanks.  If any XSI developers would like discuss some possibilities that would be great!

I found the exact same thing.  The Noessis tutorials were great, and it seemed I learned quickly how to do cool things with modtool.  But it kept hanging and occasionally crashing.  It's too bad, I spent quite some time with the tutorials and learning the interface, only to have the program to be too unstable to use (I'm running XP SP 2).  I also thought the workflow to actually get a texture model into Game Studio Express was pretty cumbersome.

I'm using Blender now... while the UI isn't very good compared to XSI modtool, it seems way more stable.

Many of the hangs were permanent (apparently) and I had to shut the program down (it usually spiked the CPU to 100%).  Some were just because the program was doing an expensive operation - sometimes more than a minute long, with no indication that everything was "ok".  There's just no excuse for that in a modern application.

Hello, do you have a specific repro scenario or do these things happen randomly ?

Thanks!

For me it doesn't seem to be random, but consistent. The longer I use it, the slower it gets and the more prone to hanging. It is as if it fails to release resources.    Im using Vista64, 2g of ram, Nvidia 8600 video, 2gig speedboost.   (I have almost identical behavior with gamespace).

This is a universal problem. 3DS Max does the same thing, but it usually goes weird like a minute before it crashes (funny mouse coursors, polygons randomly disappearing) so you know when to save, and it automatically tries to back up your files just before crashing :)

My main concern is that it normally just happens randomly.  I don't know if it is the Mod Tool or Vista, but most programs run ok on my machine.  Here are some of the problems I noticed at regular intervals and also problems other people in my class had.

-When adding a phong shader, the program just comes to a halt.
-Texturing some of the objects took upwards of 3 minutes to complete.
-The GUI dropdown sometimes would not load, making it impossible to texture over the regular albedo
-The XNA Scene add-on would become part of the tool bar, but when clicking on it, no box dropped down(this was on XP machines)(We uninstalled, reinstalled, and then updated the patch again, but not luck)

-The last thing that I had a problem with was not really the program, but the fact that I was unable to move the model in ways I mentally saw fit.  I'm not completely convinced that it was the program, but more of my lack of understanding of all the buttons that the few tutorials were unable to convey.  I think it would be nice if they had a few tutorials just explaining how to manipulate the objects.  The other think I thought was of poor design is how when you pull up a tutorial, it had to close out your model, and opened up that Noesis model.  Making it hard for me to work on my model with a tutorial right up beside it.

As for the other guy that had a question about the slowing down after a certain time, try freeing up your memory, because it logs EVERY change.  This works wonders, in the fact that you can go back every move, and also in a sense manage your garbage collection.

There is something you can do to reclaim some memory, it's to freeze modeling (check the doc for that), this will collapse every operation done in the modeling stack. In most cases, you won't need it. One good hint is looking at the size of the file that is being saved, if it reaches sizes that don't quite seem right, it's most probably because you have a lot of modeling operations still active in the modeling stack. You can also switch to immediate mode (using the XSI Default Pro Mode) to avoid storing modeling operations on the modeling stack.

As for the shader hang/freeze, we are aware of these, and one the workarounds is to avoid the use of the shaderballs. We are putting some time into fixing these for the next version (which I can't disclose anything about at this point).

Let me know if any of these make a difference.

For the record, I use it for long periods of time without any problems (but then again, maybe it's because I know my way around :-)). I do hit ctrl-s quite often though as with any other applications I use just in case something bad happens.

 

 

I suggest setting up a script that saves every 90 or so seconds!

I have used Mod Tool for abou 4 days now and I havent had it crash completely, but its a horrible memory hog.  Just sitting idle it eats up memory pretty bad.

It runs pretty stable on my system, just leaks memory.

Thanks for reporting the problem, we'll investigate on our side.

I love ModTool and i think, it's a great modeling program. it's have great interface, and the toutorials are great.

my modtool crashes alot, but i noticed it happens when the modtool is minimized or when it's not active. if it stays this way, every thing sims working fine, but there is no way making the screen active and its not responding to any input.

the problems are on vista 64bit.