Flash render, Moho closes!

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 2:58 pm

I've made quite a complex scene, the file size is about 1.4MB (i've never made anything this size before!). I can render to video and image formats fine, but i can't export to flash.

I get everything set up to export to flash, click "OK" and MoHo shuts down. I've rebooted my computer, done the process again, MoHo closes. Change the flash export settings, still closes.

MoHo File

I've attached the file, please don't go nicking any background and character work, although you can use it to play around with (personal use) if you want to.

I'm using WinXP (1.61Ghz machine), lots of RAM (1GB) and the latest version of MoHo, which is 5.2.1 i believe.

Thanks

jorgy · Post by **jorgy** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 3:09 pm

Just another data point: I see the exact same behavior when running on linux (Fedora Core 3). But, it does give this error message to the console:

Code: Select all

Curve parameters too large

Maybe this can help LM track it down.

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:43 pm

Downloaded your file to take a look (got Win XP, 1gig memory), and it wouldn't load (something about an error round frame 15688(!)). So maybe your source file is too big?
Another funny thing -- looked like the file was around 1.4Mb when it was downloading, as you said, but sitting in a directory it's around 250k. Which is odd. Sorry I can't help.

J

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 11:09 pm

jahnocli wrote:Downloaded your file to take a look (got Win XP, 1gig memory), and it wouldn't load (something about an error round frame 15688(!)). So maybe your source file is too big?
Another funny thing -- looked like the file was around 1.4Mb when it was downloading, as you said, but sitting in a directory it's around 250k. Which is odd. Sorry I can't help.

J

I've tested the download and it works fine. I'm not sure about the error, i don't seem to be getting it.

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 8:48 pm

Right, after fiddling around with the file for a while i found out what the bad smell was... the amount of points. I discovered, by reducing the amount of points, thus making the file size smaller, in certain "over-crowded" layers, that MoHo becomes stable once again to export to flash.

I think this is a bug that needs further seeing to, if possible. I've left the original file as a "just in-case" measure in case you want to see the "roots" of the problem. And anyone out there, with big MoHo files (about 1.4MB and beyond) please check the flash export and report back.

Cheers for the help.

Watching way too many detective programs.

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Thu Jul 14, 2005 4:43 pm

Right the error has come back again. It seems to be a layer problem, not a document problem.

jorgy · Post by **jorgy** » Thu Jul 14, 2005 5:06 pm

I did as you asked: I exported a large (1.8M) moho file to SWF, and it worked fine - no crash.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:16 pm

Sorry, I'm a little late to this thread. The link no longer seems to work - can you re-upload the file in question?

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 12:28 pm

Sure.

http://www.freepgs.com/cribble/moho/scene2.moho

If the link doesn't work, copy up until "moho" and just download it from the open directory, it should work though... hopefully (works fine on the PC).

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:07 pm

OK, I tracked the problem down. The problem is with the lowest layer in the project, BG1. This consists of a very wide rectangle. Because your project dimensions are so large, 1024x576, the rectangle is especially wide in pixels. Flash stores coordinates using fixed-point numbers, not floating-point. If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it - it just means that you can hit some limits in Flash sooner than you might otherwise.

There are two things you can do here:

1. Set your project dimensions lower. For example, 320x180. It's still a 16:9 ratio, and since Flash is vector-based, you can make the player window bigger on playback if you want.

2. Shrink the rectangle in the BG1 layer. It doesn't seem to need to be so wide. I used this approach in the file below:

http://www.lostmarble.com/misc/scene2_fixed.moho

And here it is after exporting to Flash:

http://www.lostmarble.com/misc/scene2_fixed.swf

I'll see what can be done about Moho closing in this situation. Moho uses a third party Flash-exporting library that unfortunately exits when an error is encountered instead of reporting the error to Moho and letting Moho deal with it.

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 12:18 pm

ahhh-haa, thanks alot. It was doing the same thing when i imported the background into another scene. So the flash export can't handle huge shapes beyond a certain point... looks like i'll have to be careful.

Thanks again.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 4:08 pm

There will be a kind of fix for this in the next update. If a shape is too large, Moho will simply shrink it down to the maximum that Flash can handle. Resizing a shape is not exactly ideal, but Flash just can't handle shapes that big.

jorgy · Post by **jorgy** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 4:26 pm

Will moho spit out a warning if it has to do this?

Post by **Lost Marble** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 5:50 pm

No, probably not. In cases like this, the object is going to be way, way far off screen, so it shouldn't be noticeable. (Unlike exported QuickTime or AVI files, offscreen objects are still part of the exported Flash file.)

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 11:22 pm

A new discover here lads! MoHo doesn't like to export, to flash, huge picture sizes.. i mean anything beyond 3500x1600 (ish). It crashed again, even upon resizing it within the moho environment. Solution: Resize image outside of moho.