Kill the messenger

[Sid Hatrack]

I am running KS9 on a PC.

Before upgrading to KS 9 I did some house cleaning and deleted some materials and textures. Now that KS9 is installed whenever I open an existing .bip file I get a message to resolve missing resources. My folder associations are all correct in the preferences, yet KS continues to looking for the deleted files. I would like a way to tell KS to stop looking for these nonexistent files and stop this irritating message.

[jhiker]

Me too.. 

[theAVator]

Basically it means that a material in your file is trying to use one of those textures but can't find it.
There's 2 ways to go about this:
1. Find the object in your model using the material with that linked texture and either delete the texture reference, or replace it with a different one.
2. Click the search folder button and pick the current location of that texture to relink what's missing.

Do one of those two things and the dialog box goes away.  Mine does the same thing when I open up an old model from like KS6 and it tries to look for the KS6 texture folder that doesn't exist anymore. I I update the link to the KS9 folder and bingo bango, messenger killed. It's 100% better than older versions where it would just throw errors in the Log and you would have to go though thousands of lines of materials to find the item with the missing texture and update that material manually and then repeat for every instance. 

[Sid Hatrack]

Regarding #1. My model has near about 20 assemblies and sub-assemblies with a part count of over 100 and about 25 textures. Scrolling down the expanded model tree in KS it is not apparent which textures are missing. If there is an easy way to reveal this I would like to know it otherwise it seems I would have to toggle through each part which is time consuming.

Regarding #2. As I mentioned in my post the files KS is looking for have been deleted.

What I envision is give the user some option in the dialog box to like "do not show this dialog box again" or "break all missing texture links".

[theAVator]

The two ways I listed are the two ways to fix it, but yes, they may not applicable to every situation. I run into the same issue, but I'm pulling full truck models with 10s of thousands of parts and this dialogue was a lifesaver for me and many other which is why it was highly requested and added in the KS9 update.

Re-regarding #1: Go to the Help menu, go down to and click on Log. This should opening the warning message dialogue box. There should be a "Cannot Load Texture" error. This error will show the path to the missing texture and also which material is using it. You can then go to your material tab and then you can search down the list pretty easily for that material, double click to edit it and then either delete or relink the texture as needed/wanted. This is how you used to have to do it for every instance of a missing texture. The new dialogue box will relink the texture for every instance that is missing it which is quite handy and time saving.

Re-regarding #2: Even though the texture was deleted, it might be easiest to relink it to something that does currently exist. I get this quite a bit with materials coming from CREO, or like now with a brushed texture I haven't used for like 3 versions. So I just link it to a current brushed texture and then I don't get the dialogue popping up anymore.

What follows here is more my opinion, so don't take offense, it's just me trying to explain my rationale.
Having the "do not show this dialog box again" or "break all missing texture links" may seem handy, but is really akin to putting a piece of tape over your car's check engine light. The program is telling you that you have broken materials, telling it to just ignore it, doesn't seem like a great workaround. It may save time now, but will still produce the errors down the line and perpetuate the issue.
I think the texture link are more hardcoded into the materials, which is why the issue exists at all. Even if you hadn't deleted the textures, the issue may still exist because of issues in how Keyshot migrates materials/textures/resources/etc. In my experience, Keyshot isn't great in how it migrates these resources from version to version. and I think they could take a queue from how Adobe handles this through their upgrades/updates. I think it just do an overall better job at collecting the resources currently used and also updating the links of the materials being migrated.

[jhiker]

Re-regarding #1: Go to the Help menu, go down to and click on Log. This should opening the warning message dialogue box. There should be a "Cannot Load Texture" error. This error will show the path to the missing texture and also which material is using it. You can then go to your material tab and then you can search down the list pretty easily for that material, double click to edit it and then either delete or relink the texture as needed/wanted.

That was very helpful - thanks!

[Sid Hatrack]

#1 was helpful. Thanks. Seeing the parts in question allowed me to relink to new textures. However, this method is not so straightforward when the file it is on a nonexistent file path. Here it is looking for a file in a KeyShot 4 folder on my C drive, which I have not had for maybe 3 years. In preferences I have set all my KS resources files to my D drive so I can't figure why is it looking for a file not set in the preferences. It seems I would have to rebuild this folder path to resolve it.

I get your warning light analogy and you make a good point. I do see the value in having this missing file message, so this is mostly frustration talking here, when I say that getting this message every time I open a file is not helpful because while it informs me of a problem, it does not offer me any path to resolve the problem. I should not have to come to the forum to get this figured out. As well as informing the user the message should have an interface to allow the user to repair broken links.

By way of example, and this happens to me a lot; I change some part names or file paths for Solid Edge parts and when I open the assembly, I get an error message that a bunch of parts have failed to load and why. The message includes and interface that lets me navigate to whatever directory I choose and replace the part with whatever one I want.  With this one message box I am both informed and instructed. When I close out the message all links are updated. This the kind of interface I am hoping KeyShot can get to.

[theAVator]

Here it is looking for a file in a KeyShot 4 folder on my C drive, which I have not had for maybe 3 years. In preferences I have set all my KS resources files to my D drive so I can't figure why is it looking for a file not set in the preferences. It seems I would have to rebuild this folder path to resolve it.

Yep! That's what I mean, it seems like some of these paths are hardcoded into the material and don't update when the link to a new/different resources folder is set. Super frustrating. This is where I think a lot of the issue is with how Keyshot installs and updates. I wish it were more similar to Adobe where it installs to 1 location and when you update, it installs to the same location and updates the existing file instead of creating a whole new set. Keyshot having to copy/install the same set of materials every time you install is inefficient and a resource waste. I wish it would ask you for the current location of you resources (or pull them automatically) instead of assuming the default location, and then just update/copy over the new materials that don't exist in the folder or have been updated - more like merging the current folders.

when I say that getting this message every time I open a file is not helpful because while it informs me of a problem, it does not offer me any path to resolve the problem... As well as informing the user the message should have an interface to allow the user to repair broken links.

I get where you're coming from. A modified dialogue box with some better options would definitely be a step forward and a definite improvement. I wasn't so on-board with a button to sweep it under the rug, so to speak, but putting the tools in place to fix it for good from one succinct spot is an absolute yes.

[germannick]

Just add a "don't show again" option to the messanger.

I don't need the messenger