Another Carrara Error

Chris Fox Art · May 2022

Yesterday i was working on a new character, saved it and when i tried to open it today i got this message:

c:\dazdevel\hudson\hudson_home\jobs\nb_carrara_85\build\carrara85\crc\kwak\ext\vertexprimitive\VMDPmset.cpp Line: 3476

An end of file error occured while executing Open.....

Don't know what this is, it was just V4.2 figure with dynamic hair and morphs, no pose or any other object was set.
Another figure i've made yesterday works normally.
Any ideas what this could be or how to fix the file?

Richard Haseltine · May 2022

Sounds as if the file was not completely written, or as if a byte was written causing it to mis a level of nesting and think it had run out of file before reaching the top-level of the data. If so it is probably irrecoverable, though it might be worth seeing if an archive repair tool could do anything (I've no idea if .car files are compressed) and it is cerrtainly a good idea to check the drive for errors and to look at what system utilities (e.g. security software) might potentially be interferring with writing to disc.

BrianP21361 · May 2022

Is this the dreaded 4GB file limit (I think that's the right number) with Carrara? If you save a file and if it's over 4GB, the next time you try and open it you'll get a file opening error. Take a look at the size of the file. It's good to purge your Carrara files before saving. Select remove unused Shader, Objects... You can't undo this so be careful.

Chris Fox Art · May 2022

BrianP21361 said:

Is this the dreaded 4GB file limit (I think that's the right number) with Carrara? If you save a file and if it's over 4GB, the next time you try and open it you'll get a file opening error. Take a look at the size of the file. It's good to purge your Carrara files before saving. Select remove unused Shader, Objects... You can't undo this so be careful.

The strange thing is, that this isn't my only file that is above 4GB and my other files works without any issues.
The first time Carrara had issues i have saved the files as compressed files, after fixing that i thought it might be a good idea just to go with the big file size but this is the first time since years when this error occured.

Unused shaders was removed, there was only dynamic hair, V4.2 with morphs and already morphed in the way i wanted, no clothes, no poses, nothing. Just textures was already set, i saved them all internally as i didn't liked to always set the file location for the images.
Files used are TIF 16 bit images, even if TIF is a big file format, all skin textures are just about 170MB so they shouldn't do much difference.

I also have made another V42, just the same way with different morphs but without added dynamic hair atm, file have about 4GB as well.

Edit: You was right about the remove unused shaders.
Normally i always do that but this might was an older file where all the shaders i've tested out was still in the file.
I have made a V4.2 base figure i always load into Carrara with all morphs integrated as i wanted to save some time that i don't have to add them manually for every new figure but when i checked my base file i used for my last 2 figures it was about 3.8GB, just base figure with morphs, so that have to be wrong.
Opened it, removed all unused objects and shader and now the base file is just 96MB.
Also the one figure i was working on where i used the same base figure was about the same file size, just removed unused objects and shaders and now it's just 390MB in size.
Maybe the dynamic hair was too much for the other file if the base file was already nearly about 4GB.
I just don't understand why other 4GB files still open and at the end, Carrara 64bit normally should be able to handle 4+GB file size.

UnifiedBrain · May 2022

I can only speculate, but based on many comments on this forum, when you have files over 4GB in size you are playing with fire.

Then again, most people (?) here do not compress when saving, as they feel that it potentially leads to errors. But I ALWAYS compress (using local settings), and I've done so since the very beginning with virtually no issues. And as a result, I also never even get close to 4GB.

So what is the "correct" approach? I don't think that anyone knows for sure. There is a lot going on under the Carrara hood that likely nobody fully understands.

Headwax · May 2022

I only get tgta error when going over 4 gig or when my hard drive is nearly full. The thing with the drive is cache files from other programs can fill it up in the short term and you dont notice and still think you have plenty of space.

Headwax · May 2022

Oh try 7zip after changing car suffix to zip,

Steve K · May 2022

I have on rare occasion gotten an "End Of File" error, typically when saving a large environment. It is never clear to me why, but I keep older versions of files that have loaded successfully for such problems. In fact, a couple of versions back, since I participate in the 48 Hour Film Contest (two days to make a five minute video), and there is no time for ... anything other than get it done. More than a few teams (mostly live action) have simply disappeared due to such computer problems.

Chris Fox Art · May 2022

Headwax said:

I only get tgta error when going over 4 gig or when my hard drive is nearly full. The thing with the drive is cache files from other programs can fill it up in the short term and you dont notice and still think you have plenty of space.

So maybe replacing the file from one HDD to another could do some help?
I've stored the files on a HDD with 8MB Cache but i have two other HDD's on this PC with 258MB Cache.
Testing out with 7zip didn't really helped as it just say that it can't be opened as an archive.