Crash when renaming objects

[Westonini]

Bit of a shot in the dark asking this but I've been banging my head against the wall for days trying to figure this out.

I don't know if anyone has ever had an issue like this, but in my scene that I've been working on for a while renaming Atoms such as lights, furniture props, UI, anything will cause an immediate crash. The crash happens the second you finish renaming and it tries to update the ID. This only started happening recently in this scene and there are no errors or logs to be seen. Moving the Atoms, enabling/disabling the Atoms, removing the Atoms, hiding the Atoms, adding plugins to the Atoms, changing the position/rotation states of the Atoms all work fine. But renaming an Atom or changing its parent may cause a crash. I say may because for some reason this doesn't always occur, maybe only 80% of the time. The crash can also still occur on an almost clean install of VaM, that has the scene's dependencies and some essentials.

The scene's json save file is around 75 MB due to it having a lot of Timeline animations, so i initially thought maybe the json is reaching it's limit? However I have a previous scene that doesn't have this issue and has even more Timeline animations than this one, sitting at around 95 MB. Then I thought maybe it's the amount of Atoms in my scene? I'm reaching almost 200 due to there being furniture that's toggled on/off for specific animations. But I've tried scenes with upwards of 800 Atoms and they don't have this problem. Now I'm wondering if it's some weird corruption issue or if I'm totally being led astray and it's something else entirely.

Strangely enough, besides this issue the scene plays just fine. I could replace the Person Atom appearances, add/modify plugins to them, and play through the entire scene without any hiccups. The problem is that this is a paid scene that I'm working on and I'd like to avoid any weird crash issues for users that puts the scene's stability into question. Say the user wants to rename something or add something then rename it- oop sudden CTD.

 

[hazmhox]

200 atoms is ok. Size is never a big problem up too 300/400mb.

A crash during rename feels like something is looking at the rename handler and might trigger a crash. This is unsolvable just by shooting in the dark. Anyone here could list dozens of plugins suggesting this or that inducing that effect.

We had similar issues with @Spacedog, and you have no other choice than stripping your scene bits by bits and try to see if it fixes it.

The process is this :

• Save your scene as a new one
• remove 1, 2, or 3 critical atoms ( generally, any atom with scripts )
• memorize them
• save the scene
• do the action that makes you crash
• still the same?
• rinse and repeat until you have isolated the culprit

If you isolate a specific atom, grab your scene before the removal process, try to delete it and see if it fixes it.
If it doesn't EVEN THO that atom fixed it during the removal process, it means several atoms are involved... which could mean you're pretty much fucked :/

 

[Westonini]

Thanks for your input, seriously appreciate it. I had already somewhat attempted that process you suggested, but you gave me some motivation to continue to look for the cause and I ended up narrowing it down 100%. Unfortunately for me the culprit was the plugin I needed the most, Timeline . I suspected as much, but I really didn't want it to be true.

I spent hours going through all 200 Atoms; deleting some, saving, and testing to see if the crash still happens. Eventually all I had was a blank scene with just Timeline on my Male and Female Atoms, and the rename crash still occurred. To double check I made an entirely new scene and imported Timeline and the crash still happened when I tried renaming one of the lights that came with the default scene. Oof.

My only guess is that I added too much to Timeline that it's bloating the scene's json file and causing issues with it. Though again, the animations and scene itself work fine, it's just renaming/changing parents of Atoms that's borked so it's kinda weird. Also wouldn't entirely explain how my previous scene didn't have this issue when its Timelines amounted to 65 MB while this one is only 51 MB.

I already promised to add more to this scene so I suppose going forward I might have to split it into two scenes and pray that it works. It's just gonna be kinda weird since the old version of the scene is already publicly released, but now in my next update the scene will be split into two parts.

 

[atani]

I have bigger sized JSONs and never had the problem stated. Can you share the mini scene that crashes to test that?
What about your session plugins, did you check those?

 

[Westonini]

Right I've also had bigger JSONs and never encountered this issue which is why it's so puzzling to me, but Timeline was the only thing I had in the scene. I tested it on an almost fresh install with the only session plugin being acid bubble's keybindings.

I can DM you the barebones scene with only the Atoms and Timeline if you wanna give it a shot. Maybe you'll get different results. All things considered if this was just a me issue I'd be pretty happy with that.

 

[Westonini]

atani confirmed they got similar results as me.

Also through my own testing I found out a paid scene by another creator actually has the same Atom rename crash issue as me. So that's kinda interesting. It's also a scene with quite a lot of Timeline animations.

I'm pretty sure the only way to resolve the issue is just to split your scene into two parts, specifically for the Timeline. Though ultimately if the crash only happens during an Atom rename and the rest of the scene works fine, I suppose it's also not the end of the world if you just want to keep it as is.

 

[hazmhox]

I don't think it's the animation itself, nor the amount. I think it's potentially something sneakier. Like for instance naming schemes, or too much targets, or something like that.

I have worked with quite insane scenes and huge mocaps, and never had that sort of issue. But I'm EXTREMELY careful on my process. For instance, names are always Camel Case or clean names.

ie: name atoms like this "MySuperAtom" and never like this "My süper Atôm / héhéhé". Avoid special char, only lowercase/uppercase, only safe special characters ( like - _ | # )

Also, the only time I had an ultra critical recurring crash on timeline. It was impossible to solve. Then I recreated my base scene from scratch. Exported the animation data. Reimported in a new scene... the problem was fixed.

So there was something "broken" in the json that got fix by recreating from scratch.

 

[atani]

I noticed that the person atoms in the scene are like _Female., so there could be something there.

 

[Westonini]

I noticed that the person atoms in the scene are like _Female., so there could be something there.

As far as I'm aware it's a safe character to use. I use it specifically on important atoms so that they're alphabetically listed at the top of the Atom list for easier access. I've used it in all my past scenes without any issue. There are even some built-in Atoms that use _ and - in their names such as "DSBR_Shelf" and "Glass-Stained".

I don't think it's the animation itself, nor the amount. I think it's potentially something sneakier. Like for instance naming schemes, or too much targets, or something like that.

I have worked with quite insane scenes and huge mocaps, and never had that sort of issue. But I'm EXTREMELY careful on my process. For instance, names are always Camel Case or clean names.

ie: name atoms like this "MySuperAtom" and never like this "My süper Atôm / héhéhé". Avoid special char, only lowercase/uppercase, only safe special characters ( like - _ | # )

Also, the only time I had an ultra critical recurring crash on timeline. It was impossible to solve. Then I recreated my base scene from scratch. Exported the animation data. Reimported in a new scene... the problem was fixed.

So there was something "broken" in the json that got fix by recreating from scratch.

You're probably right, it'd make sense if it was something real sneaky.

As far as naming conventions go I think I'm pretty good about it. I don't use camel case altho I DO use special characters, but only those safe ones you listed.

Also that crash you had sounds like a nightmare to deal with lol. I thought my scene's json might've gotten corrupted as well but reimporting the Timeline animations into a new blank scene still caused the rename crash. So I'm guessing even if it's not the length or amount of animations themselves, it might still be something within my Timeline json that causes it. When I was testing the limits in the blank scene, I duplicated the female Atom's Timeline -> disabled it -> saved and quit -> attempted to open the save (with CPU Performance Patch) and got a heap error. Without the patch I can open the save but then renaming anything gives the crash. Don't know if that indicates anything, but that save file was still only 120 MB.

It's a weird one for sure. Unfortunately for me, after spending a lot of time trying to figure it out with no luck I've kinda already came to accept that I'll most likely just have to live with it.