Maya Station

BackBurner renders fail after 60 minutes - Part 1

Have you noticed your BackBurner jobs failing for no specific reason after 60 minutes?  Well, There is a simple explanation for this.  BackBurner has a default timeout function set to it.  After 60 minutes if the the frame or task is not completed BackBurner will send a kill signal to the job and restart.

If you are noticing this on your renders, there is a simple solution to get around it.  While there is no timeout option in the BackBurner submission window.  You can set a timeout flag manually by clicking the "Use Custom Command" box and then clicking the "Populate Command" button at the bottom of the Submission Window.  This will build a long command to be sent to BackBurner and begin the job.

This is where we need to add the -timeout flag.  Below is an example of the entire command with the timeout value set to 120 minutes. I generally set this after the taskname flag.

system ("\"/usr/discreet/backburner/cmdjob\" -jobName \"exp_support_ash025444-110215\" -description \"\" -manager -priority 50 -taskList \"/usr/tmp/exp_support_ash025444-110215.txt\" -taskName 1 \"/usr/autodesk/maya2011.5-x64/bin/Render\" -timeout 120 -r file -s %tp2 -e %tp3 -proj \"/home/assist/maya/projects/default\" -rd \"/home/assist/maya/projects/default/images\" \"/Lnx-ubuntu/public/CustomerCases/renderash/exp_support_ash.ma\"")

 Hope this helps with any of your future renders!

 

Maya Viewport Technology Preview

This video is a technology preview. Autodesk wishes to caution you that this preview reflects technology research, and that actual events or results could differ materially from the preview. Also, this preview is not intended to be a promise or guarantee of future delivery of products, services or features but merely reflects technology research, which may change. Purchasing decisions should not be made based upon reliance on this preview. Autodesk does not assume any obligation to update any statements we make to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date of this technology preview.

 

 

TIF and PNG textures with Alpha not showing up correctly

Many users enjoy using PNG and TIF formats because they can store alpha information in one file and not have to deal with multiple texture files.  With the QT changes made in Maya 2011 we noticed a viewport issue with textures files that contain an alpha channel.  The issue leads to a bad viewport representation of the transparency as shown in the image below.

There is however a very simple solution to get this working just like previous version.  We can set an environment variable at the system level.  Using the Maya.env does not work.   The follwing should be set.

MAYA_NO_FAST_TEXTURE_LOAD=1

In Windows 7 this can be done through the Control Panel > System and Security >System > Advance System Settings > Environment Variables