Selected edges not being drawn

[rbwhitaker]

I've used a lot of versions of Wings in the past, but after I installed the 1.5.2 version today, I noticed that selected edges weren't being drawn. They looked exactly as though they weren't selected, even though the information in the top left corner told me they were. (And I could do actions like connect or move that made it clear they were selected, just not highlighted to look selected.)

I played around with the coloring of edges, to no effect.

Vertices and faces all draw selected just fine.

Also, when I switch to smooth shading, the selected edges are drawn as expected.

I've tried this now with the 32 bit and 64 bit versions, and they both have the same problem. What's especially odd is that now when I go back to version 1.4, I'm having the same issue. Before, version 1.4 worked. I can't be 100% positive that the installation of 1.5.2 caused this problem. It had been a couple of months since I've used Wings, and other things probably changed in the mean time.

I tried updating my device driver, and it is up-to-date.

Has anyone else seen this problem before? Anyone have a fix for it? It basically makes Wings useless, which is sad for me, because it's the only 3D modeling program that is fun to use.

[rbwhitaker]

OK, so I restarted my computer and re-ran Wings. That didn't seem to fix the problem right away, but the second time I tried running this (after another 30 minutes) it was working.

I have no clue what was going on. I can't explain why it was broken or how it got fixed, but if you're in this situation, perhaps try rebooting the computer and seeing if that fixes anything.

[micheus]

I can't be 100% positive that the installation of 1.5.2 caused this problem. It had been a couple of months since I've used Wings, and other things probably changed in the mean time.

I tried updating my device driver, and it is up-to-date.

This kind of issue has been reported some times. in general it's caused by the video card drive (mainly for Intel ones).
Your device drive is up-to-date, you told. Would have it been updated during that mean time? If so, would you roll back to the previous one and check it again?

About the possibility of the version 1.5.2 has changed something that was working for 1.4, you can remove the Preferences.txt file and start wings3d 1.4 - a new file will be created. That is the only thing that can changed by wings3d - anything else can be changed in your system.

[rbwhitaker]

Yeah, it's possible that something (including me) updated the drivers since the last time I knew it worked. I just tried to roll back the driver, but that doesn't appear to be an option right now. So unfortunately, I can't experiment with that.

In my last post, I said that after I restarted the computer, it seemed to work the second time. I think I can understand why now.

The time it worked, I used a sphere primitive instead of a cube primitive.

When I went back in again with a cube primitive, I had the same error: All edges look like plain edges, regardless of whether they're selected or hard edges.

So this is where it gets really interesting. I started transforming my sphere into a cube, in the off chance that there was something unique about the sphere vs. cube shape itself. I cut off the top with a loop cut. I could still see the edges. I cut off the bottom with a loop cut. All of a sudden, I couldn't see the edges any more. I undid that last step and the highlighted edges came back. I started deleting the edges one at a time from the bottom, and it worked, until I got towards the end. It seemed like once the model had no triangles left (only polygons with 4+ sides) I couldn't see my edges any more.

If I start from a cube (where I can't see highlighted edges) and connect two corners so that there is at least one triangle, I can see my highlighted edges again.

So it takes a very specific set of circumstances (an object with no triangular faces) to make the edges disappear.

This behavior doesn't feel like a device driver problem to me at this point (but I could be wrong). It seems like something about the way the drawing code is structured maybe. I don't know. I'd go dig into the code myself, but I don't know anything about Erlang.

At any rate, including at least one triangular face seems to be the workaround, and that's something I can live with. (Though I'd much prefer getting it fixed, and if I can help with that somehow, let me know.)

As I start using the new version of Wings, if I discover anything else about this bug, I'll report it to this thread.

[micheus]

If I start from a cube (where I can't see highlighted edges) and connect two corners so that there is at least one triangle, I can see my highlighted edges again.

So it takes a very specific set of circumstances (an object with no triangular faces) to make the edges disappear.

No. That can't be a workaround because it's not a rule. I have a PC with an on board video card (Intel GMA HD). That is what happens for me (click in the picture to enlarge it):

That really bothering me too, but I just get this bug in the PC with Intel "GPU".

Would you give us some information about your video card?
I would appreciate if you could use the GPU Caps Viewer as I've asked other users in these posts and share some deep information about it:
- Face Select Problem
- Faces selected but not highlighted
Added to your report, that sounds like different sides of the same issue.

Thanks.

[rbwhitaker]

I'd be happy to give CPU Caps Viewer a shot, but can you share a link to it? The sites I found all felt shady. (There are multiple "download" links, most of which appear to be ads. I don't trust it very much.)

Your illustration seems to capture what I'm seeing, though perhaps in reverse. For you, it looks like edges that are normal (not selected and not hard edges) are not being drawn at all. Then when you select the edge, it shows up. For me, the normal edge always seems to work, but when I select the edge, it looks like it doesn't get drawn in highlight mode, just normally (not highlighted).

I think the reason my little workaround might not have worked for you is because it's on an object/mesh by object/mesh level, not at the scene level. The object where you created a triangle seems to be working, while other objects still aren't. If you add a triangle to the handle object, do the edges appear?

[micheus]

The sites I found all felt shady. (There are multiple "download" links, most of which appear to be ads. I don't trust it very much.)

yeah, I hate that too. Here is the direct link.

If you add a triangle to the handle object, do the edges appear?

I didn't spend time with that. As I post in those links it's like a random situation that can vary for each user, but it seems always related to device drivers (you can read OpenGL manufacturer too). I'm trying to looking for a tip about it, but it can be very complicated.

[micheus]

I decide to spend some time and try to find if I'm wrong about what I said - as well each other who says the same.
For that, I used the PC with Win7/Intel HD on-board video card.

Make a triangle - as suggested by rbwhitaker - didn't worked for me, but smooth one face did. With this on mind I played with the render code for some days.
It uses vertex arrays for set the buffer for the faces definition and the function glDrawArrays with the respective option GL_TRIANGLE, GL_QUAD and GL_POLYGON (as many other 3D apps).

So, what I did was replace the routine that process the quads for other that would draw them as polygon. What I got can be seen in the gif below. The right side is my original Wings3D(32bit) install and the left one is the one I was playing:

Looking to the right one, we can notice that initially it seems to fix the edge drawing problem, but that was not true after the 3rd smooth operation. On the other hand, at the 4th smooth operation, the left one has its all edges drawn and - at this point - we can undo all operations and redo them again without the problem anymore. We can also add a new object and the problem will not appear.

Both codes work fine in a PC with AMD Radeon/Win7 and also in old PC with other Intel onboard/WinXP.

So, what is happening is out of our domain and there is no way to workaround this.