buildcubemaps command won't finish

I have a small box style testing map with lot of stuff inside of
it and one cubemap. I have lights, a skybox, no leaks, walls, entities,
props, player starts, etc. etc...

When I run the buildcubemaps command I see one screen shot. Then the
console tells me that cubemaps are building, but they never finish. Or
at least the console never tells me that they are finish.

Basically it seems to be taking way too long for me to build my cubemaps.

Any ideas?

AMP 3500+

1 G Ram

Everything else runs like a champ

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Sixteen years with a water buffalo and I think it's time to move on.

delete and re-add the cube map, add 2 or 3 cubemaps, or move them around a bit.

I've had cubemaps take a long time to finish, how much time do you wait untill you stop the program?

I've waited up to five or six minutes. It never goes past the first screen shot.

I can wait longer, but everything I read says that the full process should only take up to five minutes.

I'll delete the cubemap and make a new one (when I get home). At one
point I did have 3, then I backed down to 1 to see if it would help
with the time.

Will the console tell me when the building is finished? Something like
"buildcubmaps successful"... I'm new to HL2 editing and I've never
actually seen a successful cubemap build.

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Sixteen years with a water buffalo and I think it's time to move on.

You should be flashes of pictures going by really fast. The only time
Ive encountered problems when building cubemaps is when my display
drivers were out of date (or corrupted). Up date your display drivers,
either ATI or nVidia (ATI actually has new drivers). And make sure you
uninstall the old ones first, then restart, then install the new ones,
then restart, those steps are important.

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Posting And You

I have been a bit lazy on the new ATI driver. Outdated driver seems
like a possibility. I'll update tonight and let you know if it helped.

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Sixteen years with a water buffalo and I think it's time to move on.

Can you successfully do buildcubemaps in other maps? Or is it just that one?

Some things I've heard that can fix buildcubemaps problems:

Update your graphics driver.

Switch to a higher resolution temporarily (e.g. 1280 x 1024)

Switch the display to windowed mode, or if already windowed, switch to fullscreen.

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VMEX, Pakrat & Entspy

This is my first time messing with cubemaps. I built another larger
(original concept) map and ran into issues. Things got too hairy and
above my skill level. So I decided to build a smaller simpler map to
test and play with the issues that I ran into.

I don't know if this would happen in another map. For troubleshooting
it would be nice if I knew if this was the only map or not.

After I update my drivers (tonight) I'll make a tiny map with two rooms
connected by a hall and try to build a cubemap or two in it. If it
works then I'll know there is an issue with my current map, if it
doesn't work then I'll know that my current map is fine.

You guys have some good suggestions.

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Sixteen years with a water buffalo and I think it's time to move on.

Okay, I'm at home, I updated my drivers and I realized that the
cubemaps were building. The console never told me that it was done, so
I wasn't sure. It was building so fast that I didn't see anything
happen. I added more cubemaps and now I can see the screen shots
cycling through.

Now when I type impulse 81 into the console, I get the following error for each cubemap in my map...

error reading weapon data file for: weapon_cubemap

Any ideas on this one?

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Sixteen years with a water buffalo and I think it's time to move on.

Are you building the cubemaps, then disconnecting and reloading the map? They only work after you disconnect and recreate.

error reading weapon data file for: weapon_cubemap

CSS doesn't have the cubemap test thing, all it is is a thing that pops
into your wepon slot and picks up cube map info. Play your map in
hl2 or hl2:dm

Man the Dr. really knows his she-ite.

That makes sense, because the cubmaps were somewhat working. My gun is
no longer full bright, however I do have some props that are still full
bright. Mainly some lights that I have hanging from the ceiling, but
I'm sure that it's just going to be trial and error to get them right.

Anyways, thanks for the help guys. I think I'm on the right track now.

PS. I am restarting the map after I build the cubemaps.

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Sixteen years with a water buffalo and I think it's time to move on.