With the release of Maya 2012 Subscription Advatage Pack and Service Pack 1, a new licensing feature was introduced that affects how the license server distributes license tokens. If a Maya session goes idle for 15 minutes this feature kicks in and returns that idle license back to the license server. When the user activates the session again Maya will go back and get the license from the server. If no licenses are available, Maya will keep trying for up to 2 hours. At that point if no license is avalable the application will save yourt work and shutdown. While this is a great feature for companies using server based licenses. There is a small problem that was spotted and Autodesk is working to correct this.
The main issue you will notice is that when this idling feature kicks is on the artists box one of your cores will be pegged at 100% or very close to it. This occurs on all operating systems. Currently the only workaround we have in place is to disable this feature entirely until further notice. The following variable can be used to do this.
MAYA_DISABLE_IDLE_LICENSE=1
We also noticed some other issues for users using the OS Native browser on Windows. When the idling feature kicks in and you try to either load or save a file through the OS browser in Maya the browser itself will fail to refresh until the cursor is moved away from the window. Using the above variable will address this as well.
Cheers!
Nelson
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Does this variable go into the userprefs.mel?
Posted by: John | 10/11/2011 at 12:03 PM
No. This variable should be set at the system level.
in Windows 7 you can go to Control Panel\System and Security\System
Click Advance settings and than click Environment variable. You can either add it for the user or system.
cheers!
Posted by: Nelson Cruz | 10/11/2011 at 04:12 PM
Adding it to Maya.env is working for us.
Posted by: David Johnson | 10/11/2011 at 10:53 PM