Error has been encountered while trying to load a Tool

[Brodie3D]

I’ve been working on a file that is roughly 4 gigs in size. I save alternately to avoid file corruption (picked up since zbrush 3x)) and have had no issues thus far. After well over a month of work, today I was in the final stages of my project when Zbrush crashed upon saving my file.
I restarted Zbrush, and tried to reload the save and I recieved the error “Error has been encountered while trying to load a Tool. Loading has been aborted.”
I assumed that it was possible then that the file must have been corrupted upon the faulty save. Fortuneatly I thought, I had several other fairly current versions of the file, and one that I saved to not 15 minutes earlier. I restarted my computer, restarted Zbrush and tried to load the file. I got the same message. I have about 5 saves of this project at various “final” phases… of them, I tried to open 3 and got the same message on each. Spooked by this, I have since tried to repair, uninstall and reinstall Zbrush…

I can still open smaller files, like the ones that come installed with zbrush… but not my work files…

Here are the techy details… Zbrush 4.0, windows 7 64 bit, quad core cpu, 8 gigs of ram, 400+ gig HD free, nice video card…

PLEASE help… is there a temp folder or someplace that bad data could get lodged that’s causing this error, that i might need to delete manually or something? I can understand one file getting corrupted due to a faulty save/crash… but ALL my files over 4 gigs?
Any ideas?

[system]

your filesize is to large for 32-bits…w8 for Zb-64 bits and see if that helps was the advise I got from IT when I wanted more RAM and a better computer

[Brodie3D]

don’t believe “file size too large” to be the case at all… I’ve been working with files of that size for the past month with no issues… unless Zbrush suddenly became self aware and decided… “meh, I don’t like carrying dez big files no mo’… plop”

The only thing I can think of… is that while I alternately save out my Ztl’s to avoid situations like this (irony)… I don’t always restart Zbrush or refresh with a new document.

So I guess it’s possible that all those other ZTL’s are still visible under my tool palette… Even though they’re not active.

Regardless, I don’t know WHY a crash while saving out one ZTL would affect the others… in the palette or otherwise…

and if it corrupted all my ZTL’s under the pallete… why can I still open the default tools? Doesn’t make any sense to me, but that’s the best theory I can come up with…

I’m hoping to hear back from their tech support with something a little more helpful than “wait until zbrush 64 bits”…

my helpful reply back to that would be… “oh you mean the software you SHOULD have released with version 4?” :rolleyes:

[Brodie3D]

I called pixologic support… after explaining the situation… the guy I spoke to told me that the issue would certainly not be zbrush corrupting my files and that it “has” to be one of three things… a bad install… a faulty ram module… or a virus/spyware using up resources…

I did a complete reinstall (deleting folders etc…)… I used memory check software and ran two complete passes just to be sure… and i did two virus sweeps from two different virus protection software to leave no stone unturned…

everything is fine… but none of my tools will load.

I called back and was told by the same guy that he had no idea what the problem is and to submit a support ticket… something I’ve already done… but will update with these latest “findings”… and of course it was recommended to supply the ztool as well…

being as that they are 4 gig files… and since Pixologic doesn’t have an FTP server for these types of situations… I don’t know what options I have.
File Shares limits your uploads to 500 megs…

anyone know of any other “free” or at least very cheap… options for large file sharing?

[Brodie3D]

Just to update here as I did elsewhere…

Pixologic support got back with me and said while Zbrush can write files larger than 4gigs it can’t read files over 4gig because that is a limitation of being 32 bit software.
The times my files opened when they were that large were basically a fluke… luck.
which in turned… was really unlucky because I continued to work and build and unwittingly make the files ever larger… eventually alt saving through all my back up files until all of them were too large for zbrush…

Anyway… From here on out I guess I’m carefully watching my files sizes…

Here’s hoping pixologic unleashes zbrushs full potential with a 64 bit soon… until then… i guess I’ll keep crossing my fingers and wincing everytime I go through the twelve step process to lessen the risk of a crash while saving…

[aurick]

We’ve been continuing to look into this. Something that might help is to go to the Preferences palette and click on Performance>H Priority. This is a shortcut that replaces going to the Task Manager while ZBrush is running, right-clicking on the ZBrush.exe in the Processes list and choosing Set Priority > High.

Giving ZBrush high priority might help let ZBrush load larger files. If successful, it would still be wise to then trim layers and such to reduce the file size before you save again.

[Brodie3D]

thanks AGAIN for the tip… aurick…but still no dice… i even tried closing all the unnecessary background processes other than what absolutely had to be running and I get the same error…

those files are just way too big I’m guessing… wish it was a personal project I’d just set it aside and do other things until (if) Zbrush 4. whatever comes out with 64bit and try to open them then… but I have to get these done so it’s a do over for me…

[ancomic]

Me too!
See screenshot.