If you have a technical support question that is not answered by the information below, please contact us at support@genarts.com. Be sure to include your company name and info about what Shake version, which OS, and what Sapphire Plug-ins version you are running. The version information should be printed on the shell when you start Shake. If you have a non-technical license question, please email license@genarts.com.

For support on Final Cut Pro, please visit our AE Plug-ins page instead.

Frequent issues:

• My floating license doesn't work. A watermark appears:
      On Mac   On Linux
• My serial number doesn't work. A watermark appears.
• How do I access the online documentation?
• On Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, the Sapphire installer is failing.
• QMaster is not finding the plug-ins.
• I see strange artifacts in parts of the viewer image.
• I get an error: "The procedure entry point could not be located..."
• My Shake won't start after installing Sapphire.
• On Linux, I can't find the GenArts tool tab.
• On Linux, I don't see any plug-in icons in the GenArts tool tab.
• I have problems with macros that use Sapphire Plug-ins
• How can I uninstall Sapphire Plug-ins?

• If your Shake is running on an Intel Mac, please contact us to transfer your floating flexlm license to a serial number license. Flexlm licenses cannot be used with Shake on Intel Macs.
• Check the Shake console window for any flexlm error messages. If there is an error there, but it is not obviously helpful, please email it to us.
• Go to the /Applications/GenArtsSapphireShake/flexlm folder and check that your correct license is shown in the genarts.lic file. Make sure the host name in the SERVER line of your license is the name or IP address of your license server machine. Make sure the lmhostid is also included after the name and is correct.
• Make sure the name of your license server machine does NOT have spaces in it. If it does, use the IP address in the license instead of the name, or else rename your server.
• On the license server machine, open your genarts license file and make sure the licenses were entered correctly as provided.
• Check that the date on your computer is correct (for both server and client).
• Check the license daemon status on your license server machine, by typing the shell command on Mac OS X:
    ps -aguxww | grep genarts
  or on Linux:
    ps -eaf | grep genarts
  You should see a line indicating that lmgrd is running with the genarts license file. If not, check the flexlm daemon log file, which is in /Applications/GenArtsSapphireShake/flexlm/genarts-flexlm.log on Mac OS X, or /usr/genarts/flexlm/genarts_flexlm.log on Linux. It will probably have an error message explaining why the daemon didn't start.
• After starting Shake and using the first Sapphire Plug-in, look in the console window for a message printed after initializing Sapphire Plug-ins. Does it say "Not Licensed"? Is there any letter in parentheses following that? If so, please email us these messages.
• You can diagnose flexlm license problems on Mac OS X with the following commands:
    cd /Applications/GenArtsSapphireShake/flexlm
    ./lmutil lmdiag -c genarts.lic
  That will print out a bunch of info on the license server and the status of the licenses. If it's not obviously helpful, send us that output.
• You can restart the flexlm server with the following command:
    sudo SystemStarter start GenArtsLicenseServer
  Type your Mac login password when it prompts for it. It should give you a summary of the license status if it is working properly.
• If it still doesn't work, please send us all 4 of your license files: Shake's key.dat (if you have one) and genarts.lic, on both the license server and the machine running Shake. Also send us the Sapphire flexlm daemon log file on the license server.

My floating license for Shake on Linux doesn't work. A watermark appears.

• Check the Shake console window for any flexlm error messages. If there is an error there, but it is not obviously helpful, please email it to us.
• Open your genarts license file and make sure the host name in the SERVER line of your license is the name or IP address of your license server machine. Make sure the lmhostid is also included after the name and is correct.
• On the license server machine, open your genarts license file and make sure the licenses were entered correctly as provided.
• Check that the date on your computer is correct (for both server and client).
• Check the license daemon status on your license server machine, by typing the shell command:
  ps -eaf | grep genarts
  You should see a line indicating that lmgrd is running with the genarts license file. If not, check the flexlm daemon log file, which is in /usr/genarts/flexlm/genarts_flexlm.log. It will probably have an error message explaining why the daemon didn't start.
• After starting Shake and using the first Sapphire Plug-in, look in the console window for a message printed after initializing Sapphire Plug-ins. Does it say "Not Licensed"? Is there any letter in parentheses following that? If so, please email us these messages.
• If it still doesn't work, please send us all 4 of your license files: Shake's key.dat (if you have one) and genarts.lic, on both the license server and the machine running Shake. Also send us the Sapphire license log file on the license server, which is normally in /usr/genarts/flexlm/genarts_flexlm.log.

My serial number doesn't work. A watermark appears.

• If your serial number has an expiration date, perhaps it has expired.

• Make sure you are using the most recent version of Sapphire Plug-ins. If necessary download and install the current version for Mac or Linux.

• Make sure you have run the Sapphire installer on your machine, rather than cloning, ghosting, or copying files from another workstation. If you installed by copying, just re-run the installer.

• Make sure the date on your computer is correct.

• If the Ethernet (MAC) address of your computer has changed since you ran the installer, you may get this watermark. Re-install Sapphire Plug-ins using the installer, then re-enter your serial number.

How do I access the online documentation?

Online documentation for Sapphire Plug-ins is normally installed on your machine along with the software and is available in HTML and PDF formats. It includes some general information about how to load and use plug-ins, and also includes a page for each effect with an example image, description of what each parameter does, and links to related effects.

You can access this documentation directly from your workstation even if it is not connected to the internet. On Mac, go to the /Applications/GenArtsSapphireShake folder and select Online Help (HTML or PDF). On Linux, point your HTML browser at file:/usr/genarts/sapphire-nreal/docs/intro.html.

All Sapphire Plug-ins also include a "Help" button in their parameter page that will bring up the on-line documentation in your HTML browser for the current plug-in in use.

On Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, the Sapphire installer is failing.

Sapphire version 2.02 should work fine with Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, except for an issue with the installation which can usually be resolved by running the installer twice.

Due to changes in security behavior of Mac OS Leopard, the Sapphire installer will pause for about 30 seconds, and then show a dialog saying:

"ChooseDirs is an application which was downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?"

If you answer this by selecting Open and then OK within about 5 seconds, all should be fine. But if you delay before answering, you will later get an error saying "Install Failed". In this case please run the installer again, and it should work properly the second time.

If you answered Open Web Page or Cancel you will also see an error saying "Install Failed". In this case run the installer again and attempt to answer Open and OK quickly. If it still fails, run the installer a third time, and it should finally work without an error.

QMaster is not finding the plug-ins.

QMaster doesn't set up the system environment variables properly by default, so plug-ins may not be found even if they are properly installed on the render machines. The recommended solution is to create or update your .profile file in the home directory of the user that QMaster will log in as, by adding the following lines:

export NR_INCLUDE_PATH=/Applications/Shake/Shake.app/Contents/PlugIns
export SAPPHIRE_NREAL_DIR=/Applications/GenArtsSapphireShake/config
export GENARTS_LICENSE_FILE=/Applications/GenArtsSapphireShake/config

Do this on each render machine. Make sure the .profile file is saved as plain text. If you have any other plug-ins, also add them to NR_INCLUDE_PATH with a colon separator.

I see strange artifacts in parts of the viewer image.

Make sure your "incremental update" mode is OFF. The little lightning bolt button on the middle left of the Shake GUI should be off.

If the input image of a plug-in node is smaller than its output, and you view the output while tweaking the input, only a subset of the viewed image will be updated unless the "incremental update" is off. This is a known Shake problem.

I get an error: "The procedure entry point could not be located..."

Make sure you have the correct version of Sapphire Plug-ins for the version of Shake you are running. For example, Shake 4.0 and 4.1 require different versions of plug-ins.

If your versions seem to agree and you still see this error, please report it to us with your version details. Unfortunately, new versions of Shake are often incompatible with existing plug-ins.

My Shake won't start after installing Sapphire.

Make sure you are running the proper version of Sapphire Plug-ins for your Shake version.

This problem can also occur if Shake tries to load two copies of Sapphire Plug-ins. Make sure you only have one copy installed. Search for and remove any extra copies that you might have made.

On Linux, I can't find the GenArts tool tab.

On Linux, if the GenArts tool tab does not appear in the Shake interface after you install Sapphire Plug-ins, you probably need to set the NR_INCLUDE_PATH environment variable to properly include the /usr/genarts/SapphireNReal/include directory. Check step 3 of the instructions provided on the download page for setting this on your system after you've run the installer. You may also need to log out and log back in again.

On Linux, I don't see any plug-in icons in the GenArts tool tab.

On Linux, if you see only a row of funny little boxes or icons that all say "missing artwork" in the GenArts tab, you probably need set the NR_ICON_PATH environment variable to properly include the /genarts/SapphireNReal/icons directory. Check step 3 of the instructions provided on the download page for setting this on your system after you've run the installer. You may also need to log out and log back in again.

I have problems with macros that use Sapphire Plug-ins

If you include a Sapphire Plug-in in a Shake macro and you want to expose a plug-in's popup button as a macro parameter, you need to quote and prepend a colon to the name in the macro .h file (name should become ": name"). Also, for any exposed popup-menu or radio-button parameters, you need to add their UIs manually to the macro UI .h file.

As an example, S_LensFlare includes a popup lens parameter. This is represented internally by shake as a string, so you need to put the parameter name in quotes and prepend a colon to it where it's used in the call to S_LensFlare. Here is a corrected macro .h file:

image MyLensFlare(
   image Background=0,
   int autoTrack=1,
   const char *lens="anamorphicBlue",
   float raysRotate=0,
   float pivotX=.5*width,
   float pivotY=.5*height
)
{
   S_LensFlare1 = S_LensFlare(Background, 0, 1.01, autoTrack, ": lens",
       .2*width, 1, raysRotate, 0, 0, pivotX, pivotY, .01*width,
       1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1);

   return S_LensFlare1;
}

Then, to create the proper UI for the lens popup, and the autoTrack radio parameters, find the appropriate lines in the sapphire_nreal_UI.h file and copy them into your macro. On Mac, sapphire_nreal_UI.h is in /Applications/Shake/shake.app/Contents/PlugIns/startup/ui/sapphire_nreal_UI.h. On Linux it's in /usr/genarts/sapphire-nreal/include/startup/ui.

In this example, you will need to add the following lines to your macro's UI.h file, but replace MyMacro with your macro's name:

nuxDefMultiChoice("MyMacro.lens", sapphire_get_file_popup_names(0));
nuxDefRadioBtnOCtrl("MyMacro.autoTrack", 0, 1, 1, "0|No","1|Yes");

Then the macro should be usable.

How can I uninstall Sapphire Plug-ins?

On Mac: go to /Applications/GenArtsSapphireShake and double-click on Uninstall Sapphire Plug-ins.

On Linux: become root, and type the shell command:
rpm -e SapphireNReal