Standalone version will not start

Particle Illusion
#1

Recenty upgraded to PI Standalone 2022.5 v 15_5_2 and it will not start. Or more accurately it starts very breifly and then crashes. Sometimes there is time tyo see the initial GUI before it disappears, but on most occassions I don’t even get that.

Reverting to 2022 15_0_3 works fine.

Any ideas.? Tried reporting to BorisFX but they told me they were uninterested in supporting the standalone version, and to seek advice here instead.

I include the basic event log error:

Faulting application name: Particle Illusion.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x62f69dc6
Faulting module name: Particle Illusion.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x62f69dc6
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000015f1e7
Faulting process ID: 0x4fbc
Faulting application start time: 0x01d91b9820290215
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\BorisFX\Particle Illusion Standalone\15\lib\ParticleIllusion\Particle Illusion.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\BorisFX\Particle Illusion Standalone\15\lib\ParticleIllusion\Particle Illusion.exe
Report ID: 0c6e9a39-0ef9-4ac7-80a9-e8ca76396d4b
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Note I have a full, licenced copy of Continuum, and the latest OFX version of PI works fine

#2

You’re seeing this because you have both PI 2023 and 2022.5 installed. There’s a bug in 2022.5 that crashes when it encounters an emitter library that is unsupported (created with a newer version).

We have not released 2022.53 yet, but that will fix the issue.

The workaround is to rename the 2023 libraries so 2022.5 can’t find them – I usually change the extension from “.il3” to “.ilx” for instance. You’ll need to do that to:

  • EmitterLibraries\Emitters_2023.il3
  • UserEmitterLibraries\Custom.il3 (only if you’ve saved any custom emitters using 2023)
  • any other UserEmitterLibraries that you’ve saved emitters or scenes to using 2023
#3

For reference the emitter libraries are found here:

Mac:
/Library/Application Support/BorisFX/EmitterLibraries
/Library/Application Support/BorisFX/UserEmitterLibraries

Windows:
C:\ProgramData\BorisFX\EmitterLibraries
C:\ProgramData\BorisFX\UserEmitterLibraries

#4

Ok, thanks, I’ll give it a go - but does this mean PI 2023 won’t be able to find the emitter libraries either?

#5

Unfortunately, yes.

Do you really need to use 2022.5 now that you have 2023?

If you just want to run Particle Illusion on its own (without opening the host) you can do that with the plugin version of PI – just look in the Continuum app folder for the Particle Illusion shortcut.

I do this all the time (run plugin version of PI as standalone app).

#6

Do you really need to use 2022.5 now that you have 2023?

TBH, no, not really, and now that you’v e mentioned that I can

run plugin version of PI as standalone app

which it hadn’t previously occurred to me was possible, not at all!

Thanks