Push Keys - .babylon file doesn't render in browser

[dbawel]

Hi,

 

I hadn't yet pushed keys to a .babylon object, so I used "Soul's Rover" from a recent post with a simple cube.  However, I'm unable to render a textured cube with keys pushed to translation in Z axis.  I changed very little in the HTML file only to reference my scene and scene element.

 

I've attached the files if anyone has time to take a quick look. 

 

Thank you,

 

David B.

cube_push_keys_test.zip

[GameMonetize]

Hey David, in order to get a quick look we need a repro case in the playground

[dbawel]

Hi DK,

 

I'm not sure how to post my .babylon file to be referenced correctly in Playground.  Where do I upload the .babylon file and texture?

 

Cheers,

 

David B.

 

P. S. - By the way, I was a huge Babylon 5 geek.  I'm sure I still have the last episodes on a VDR.  Props to you.

[gryff]

Hi David I took your .blend file into Blender 2.71 and exported out the .babylon file

 

Used the "Soul's Rover" index.html page I created - just changed the name of the babylon file, removed the "_" character in the name of the babylon file and changed the movement from 2 to 4 on the z axis.

 

Animated Cube

 

Works fine.

 

I looked at your html file - at the script locations. Your files throw an error "BABYLON is not defined" - usually means, in my limited experience, it is not finding the babylon.js file (but I'm just a javascript wimp )

 

Here is a zip file of the files that make the above run:

 

Cube.zip

 

Not sure if that helps.

 

cheers, gryff

 

 

[dbawel]

Hi gryff,

 

I used your "Soul's Rover" index.html page, so perhaps it's a syntax error on my part identifying the .babylon file.  I'll take a look, but the link you posted seems to work fine.

 

Thanks so much for taking a look at this, and for pointing out my not paying attention to the file name.  I wish the JS console would output a file error (identified in the javascript body), but I should also look at my scripts more carefully.

 

I don't know what I would do without this forum, as it's taught me so very much in a short time.

 

Cheers,

 

David B.

 

Post Script: I don't know if anyone will read this post now as gryff answered the question, but many of the issues I've been having might be related to using "_" in many file names (old habits die hard.)  I'm not certain if this is the case, but I've definitely learned that using "_" in .babylon files is a no no.   I wonder what other habits I need to shed?  However, this is possibly a big issue, since I'm prepping many characters in blender.  I hope this info gets to the BabylonJS community.

[Stephen Andrews]

Hi gryff,

 

I used your "Soul's Rover" index.html page, so perhaps it's a syntax error on my part identifying the .babylon file.  I'll take a look, but the link you posted seems to work fine.

 

Thanks so much for taking a look at this, and for pointing out my not paying attention to the file name.  I wish the JS console would output a file error (identified in the javascript body), but I should also look at my scripts more carefully.

 

I don't know what I would do without this forum, as it's taught me so very much in a short time.

 

Cheers,

 

David B.

 

Post Script: I don't know if anyone will read this post now as gryff answered the question, but many of the issues I've been having might be related to using "_" in many file names (old habits die hard.)  I'm not certain if this is the case, but I've definitely learned that using "_" in .babylon files is a no no.   I wonder what other habits I need to shed?  However, this is possibly a big issue, since I'm prepping many characters in blender.  I hope this info gets to the BabylonJS community.

Actually, that's one area where Babylon could really use some improvement. File handling is not well done at the moment. You shouldn't have to specify a path separate from the file name, and any character limitations should be removed or well-documented.

Sorry you had to discover it like that. :x

[GameMonetize]

I see no reason why "_" should be a problem. For me there is no problem naming meshes with "_". For me there is NO character limitation (or there is a bug and I will fix it!)

 

"You shouldn't have to specify a path separate from the file name, and any character limitations should be removed or well-documented." We have a documentation for that . 

[dbawel]

Hi DeltaKosh,

 

I was baffled for two days trying to figure out why my test scene wouldn't load.  However, I was able to recreate the same result as gryff - if I removed the underscore from the .babylon file when writing to disk, the scene loads fine.

 

I have also been successfully loading .babylon files with underscores in the file names, as it's an old discipline to use benign characters in file names, and a hard habit to break.  So I don't know if there's anything wrong with the exporter - as I'm still baffled.  The error I receive in the JS console is an error in the babylon.js master script, so it might be some conditional issue in the master JS file.  But just to be safe, I've stopped writing underscores to .babylon files and have had no further issues.

 

I've carefully parsed the .babylon file, and as far as I can tell there's no reason why it shouldn't work.  The files are attached to my original post if you would like to take a look.  But I wouldn't spend much time on this, as it appears to be somewhat conditional - if a problem at all.  This appears to be an isolated case thus far.

 

Tanks,

 

David B.

[GameMonetize]

I've just test your files and I had no issue (windows + IIS as http server)

[dbawel]

Hi Deltakosh,

 

Thanks for looking at the file.  As you thought, the exporter appears to be working fine - underscore or not.  However, when I try the .babylon files on our server, they don't render.  I'll look at the server config file, as perhaps the .babylon file isn't identified correctly.  Perhaps this is why it is not working for others posting on their servers as well.  I'll let you know.  

 

Cheers,

 

David B.

[GameMonetize]

Sounds like a good reason

[dbawel]

Hi Dk,

 

We changed the web config file to reference .babylon and .fx files, but are still unable to load all .babylon files.  We also have an issue of having to load a basic scene before we're able to call a scene with a .babylon file.  As I've posted several scenes here in which I thought I made an error - however, members of this forum were able to load and post a working link.  So that appears to point directly to our server as an issue.  I've seen other posts on this forum of .babylon files not loading, and when I look at these, they receive the same console errors in loading babylon.js and a .babylon file.  So we are spending today debugging our server to find out if it's either a timing issue or possibly a conflict - or both.

 

I hope to have an answer tomorrow.

 

Cheers,

 

David B.

[GameMonetize]

Can you check your f12 tools and see if the network monitor raises an error ? (403/404)

[dbawel]

Hi Dk,

 

I've been receiving 404 errors when loading the babylon.js file on every .babylon file loaded.  The relatively good news is that over the weekend, we've been debugging our server and found errors in reading the web.config and XML files. The server appears to be configured correctly, however there is certainly a problem when loading the BabylonJS framework and associated files.  Our server is Linux; are there any known issues with BabylonJS and Linux servers?

 

We're continuing to troubleshoot today, and are certain we will solve this.  I'll post the solution for our servers once we pinpoint the problem.  As our server configuration is standard, I might guess that other forum members may have had similar issues loading the BabylonJS framework on their servers.  This comes from reading other members posts and the JS console errors they also have received when trying to load .babylon files.  We have also noticed approx. a 2 second delay when loading procedural elements such as a skybox from our server, which also generates similar errors, but does load - however, we're certain this is all related to our server configuration and file calls.

 

Thanks for checking in 

 

David B.

[GameMonetize]

So far we have a lot of apache users and I'm not aware of specific issues.

 

Can you try on different server? Like IIS?

[dbawel]

It's taking more time than we thought to troubleshoot our server.  Not as simple as we thought.  We don't currently have access to an ISS server, but we're fairly certain it's an issue with our Apache server - specifically. I'll provide details on on what we discover, in case it might apply to anyone else.

[dbawel]

Hi DK,

 

It took us more than a week to assess why we were having inconsistent problems loading BabylonJS scenes.  We've identified at least two problems.  First, our server wasn't referencing htaccess correctly, and we found that if we uploaded the files using FTP, we had problems as passwords and other files are not encrypted.  So through research, we found that if we used a Unix shell such as putty, we were able to maintain the integrity of every file, and no longer receive any errors.

 

The second issue is we have found incompatibility between versions of the BabylonJS master file and versions of the Blender .babylon exporter.  Now that we have everything working on our server, we're going through the different versions of BabylonJS master and the .babylon Blender exporter to catalog compatibility.  We know this is the case as we have an older version .babylon file that doesn't work with the new BabylonJS master file - and had to revert back to an older BabylonJS master file in order to load the scene.  I'll log and post any incompatibilities we find.

 

Cheers,

 

David B.

[GameMonetize]

I would love to fix any issues you may find

[dbawel]

Hi Dk,

 

I plan on tackling this over the weekend, and will send you any findings.  Do you want me to send to you directly, or go ahead and post whatever we might identify here on the forum?

 

BTW - I must speak for everyone to say how much we all appreciate the work you provide and how you enable us to create content.  We are all thankful for your efforts.

 

Cheers,

 

David B.

[GameMonetize]

My pleasure:)

 

Please use the forum. I will be out of town next week so I prefer using the forum instead of my mail:)

[dbawel]

More W. o W?    I'll post here what I find - So far it's one .babylon file that requires an older version of the BabylonJS master.  Have a great holiday!

[GameMonetize]

No Hawai this time with my wife:)

[dbawel]

Hi DK,

 

It took allot more time to troubleshoot why we couldn't load files with consistent (or positive) results from our server.  What I discovered this last weekend was that the problem is a combination of two issues.  

First, our server appears to have timing issues, and I assume it's due to traffic but we're looking into this further.  Second, and most affecting our problems is that the browser uses it's cache much longer than I thought.  I assumed that if I launch a new Chrome browser, that Javascript files were refreshed.  However, there is no refreshing of any files that I can find until the refresh button is pressed.  I couldn't properly troubleshoot this as the timing problems wouldn't expose a changed file even on refresh for up to 10+ seconds.  So, even though the files were correct upon refresh, the browser loaded from cache as the server didn't respond in a timely fashion.

 

The only way I discovered this was to start from a sample scene online.  I used the loadScene.html file from paddyschller.com, and copied ALL of the files from the directory into a new directory on our server.  When I found this basic scene loaded correctly (mostly), I then renamed the babylon.js file so that it could not be loaded.  I then refreshed the page and of course the scene wouldn't load at all.  I then renamed the babylon.js file correctly, and the scene still would not load wit a new Chrome browser and typing the full path to the html file.  And then I refreshed the browser and found the file still wouldn't load - so I retried until it loaded.  I have the exact same results when using links with no browser open, and realized that the only way to refresh any files was to press the refresh button.

 

I assume there is a setting in the advanced options in Chrome to change this, but I haven't looked yet.  For developing quickly, I hope an automatic refresh can be set.  

 

So there doesn't appear to be any issue with babylon.js and .babylon files causing our problems.  Just to be safe, I will now check versioning as there are still a few answered questions, however it appears to be a browser cache and server timing issue which caused our files to appear to not load.  I see so many posts where other users are not able to load files correctly and wonder if this might also be affected by browser cache refresh in Chrome.

 

Thank you for all of the valuable work you and others provide us, and know that we're here to contribute what we can.  I hope you're watching the sunset in Hawaii right now - it's about that time. 

 

Cheers,

 

David B.

[GameMonetize]

You can go to the "gear" menu in chrome and ask for no cache when debug tools are open:)

[dbawel]

excellent!  I advise everyone do this.