max crashing on export

#1 Max crashes can be caused by a lot of different things. The most common occurances that can cause Max to crash include...

-Bad hardware components that you have in your system (Max somehow manages to find bad or flakey hardware like there is no tomorrow)
-Bad or old drivers installed in your system
-An old BIOS
-Not enough free hard drive space
-A fragmented hard drive
-Corrupt Max file or corrupted DLL files
-Running Win9x/Me instead of an NT based OS

I would also not discount the fact that you might just have something setup wrong in your scene setup which is causing the exporter Utility to generate an error and crash when it reaches a certain location.

Logan

#2 How can I tell if it something in my scene, in know it is not any of the other stuff because I have never had this problem before, plus I check my system every other day. it only happens when i export as .dts and .dsq files.

#3 I don't know if this would help, but you can try merging all objects from your current file into a new one, then try exporting again.

John

#4 Do you mean merge all of my max files into one scene? also I believe i read that once I have my dts file my dsq files don't need to have the mesh any more because it uses the bones or biped as a reference or should I keep the mesh in my dsq files and not delete it?

#5 You can see all the objects in your scene by using the selection menu.

Just hit H and it will show you all the objects in your scene.

I would check to make sure there are no points or extra dummies in your scene. I had a model that I was working on give me problems; until I realized that the points I created to keep track of proportions were still there.

#6 I do have a .cfg file that tells it what to and not to export or do I even need that?

#7 To merge all of your files into a new scene... create a new scene, then choose file>merge, this will bring up a window, choose your scene that is giving you the errors, another window will appear asking you what you want to merge, select everything and hit ok. You have now merged one scene into another.

Merging scenes is useful if there is something corrupted in the file itself or if you are no longer able to access the file (which is generally caused by a lack of swap file space).

Anythony's question relates to my point that I mentioned about ensuring that your scene is setup correctly. Make sure that you do not have any uneccessary nodes in your scene. Make sure that you have everything linked correctly to the right parent and the right child. Make sure that you have the neccessary nodes for the exporter to work. Things like that are what you want to check in your scene. Use one of the sample scenes that have been provided with Torque or with the Exporter documentation to check your scene.

If you are completely certain that you have setup your scene correctly and that your file is not corrupted, then start checking your hardware. There are plenty of culprits that can cause a crash, and most of them you do not even think about or notice in your average everyday usage of your machine.

In regards to your other questions...

Mesh information is not needed for a DSQ, in fact when you start to cull out some bones from being exported, you will need to remove the mesh or else you will generate a "unable to collapse bone#..." error.

You should always use a CFG file or else certain nodes will be ignored by the exporter (ie. the Eye, Cam, and Mount nodes will be ignored upon export unless your CFG is configured right).

Logan

#8 you know what guys?.......I feel like an idiot, I had a dummy as the bounding box instead of a box, once i changed that and unlinked my mesh i had no problems. thanks for the pointers.