Maya Station

Mac OS X: Mudbox 2013 and Maya 2013 “Send to…” not working correctly

We generally do not post about things that are noted in the release notes but I thought this was an important enough issue that deserved to be sent to a wider audience.

The File > Send To is not working correctly. Maya 2013 or Mudbox 2013 may not open when you select File > Send To and nothing will be sent.  This will only affect users on Mac OS.

This issue has been resolved with an update to the libsynHub.dylib file. The steps below describe how to replace the current libsynHub.dylib file with the updated version.  Any future service pack or release will contain this file already. So, this only affects the gold release of Mudbox 2013.

1. Make sure Mudbox 2013 and Maya 2013 are installed.

2. Make a backup copy of your current Maya libsynHub.dylib file located in: /Applications/Autodesk/maya2013/Maya.app/Contents/MacOS 

3. Download and extract the attached libsynHub.dylib file to the same location: /Applications/Autodesk/maya2013/Maya.app/Contents/MacOS

4. Make a backup copy of your current Mudbox libsynHub.dylib file located in: /Applications/Autodesk/Mudbox2013/Mudbox.app/Contents/MacOS

5. Download and extract the attached libsynHub.dylib file to the same location: /Applications/Autodesk/Mudbox2013/Mudbox.app/Contents/MacOS

The file can be downloaded from the Support Knowledge Base here.

 

Cheers!

file -loadReferenceDepth ; a couple of tips for defering references

First post of the new year, and I bring you a couple of tips about how to defer loading references.

Maya 2012 SAP: The CPU is maxed out if Maya is idle for more than 15 minutes

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

 

 

 

A couple of useful procedures for finding related Proxy references

If you have Proxy references in a scene it can be tricky to find which ones are related.

The Maya 2011 file browser has disappeared !

On Windows, some information about the Maya 2011 File Browser and the Maya 2011 Color Picker is stored in the registry, not the userPrefs.mel file as you may expect.

For example, the position and size of the Maya File Browser are stored in the registry location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Maya\2011.5-x64\FileDialog (depending on the version it could also be in 2011, 2011.5, 2011-x64).

The syntax of 'pos' is @Point(xxx yyy), as illustrated:

If the situation arises where you can't see the Maya 2011 File Browser, you would check the value of the FileDialog key 'pos'. Try resetting this value to @Point(0 0) and then restart Maya.

Thanks to Nicolas Holst for the tip.

Owen

Export data from Maya 2011 to Alias Studio

Prior to Maya 2011 there was no easy way to export data from Maya to Alias Studio, as a .wire file, if you were using a 64 bit platform.

If you have installed a 64 bit version of Maya 2011, simply load the DCExport plugin from the Plug-in Manager, then choose the SPF_DCE from the list of file types in the Export options, as illustrated.

 

workspace.mel

Maya 2011 overwrites the workspace.mel file whenever the user sets a Project, or launches a Batch Render, unlike in Maya 2010 where the workspace.mel file was read but not overwritten.

FBX 2011.3.1 is available for download

You can now download the FBX 2011.3.1 plug-in for Maya and 3ds Max here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775855

Thanks,

Owen

Exported selected to Mudbox on a Mac

To get it work properly you need to insure the application location is set correctly as Maya cant recognize the .app as excitable in OS X for Mudbox.

The workaround is to set the Application Path for Autodesk Mudbox, navigate to the application folder using the folder icon rather than manually inputting the path in the field.
Double-click the .app file and then navigate to Contents/MacOS/Mudbox.

Maya, mental ray standalone and iray

Outlined here is a (simplified) approach to using iray with Maya - if you have mental ray standalone 2011 licenses:

1. In Maya use 'export all' to create a .mi file,
2. Render the file from the command line: ray -iray on [further options] <filename>

For more details, including setting string options to turn on iray, see this post on the mental images forum: http://forum.mentalimages.com/showthread.php?t=6584

A couple of things to look out for:

• if your images turn out black: "Maya light sources with high intensity values", depending on the scene size that may mean very high intensity values (like 1000000 or more),
• if the quality is too low you may need to increase 'progressive max time' either in the scene/.mi file or by using the -progressive_max_time xxx option on the command line,
• if you need more samples increase 'progressive max samples' or use the -progressive_max_samples xxx option to override the value set in the file.

To compare the speed on the graphics card vs the speed on the cpu you can use the -iray option: -iray on uses the graphics card, -iray cpu uses the cpu.

If you set verbosity to 4 (add -v 4 on the command line) you can check which CUDA devices are being used:

• With -iray on you'll see something like:
  
  IRAY 0.2  info : found 1 CUDA devices
  IRAY 0.2  info : defaulting to use all CUDA devices
  
  
• With -iray cpu you'll see something like:
  
  IRAY 0.2  info : found 1 CUDA devices
  IRAY 0.2  info : empty device string, using CPU backend exclusively
  
  In case you don't have any CUDA capable devices in the system you'll see:
  
  IRAY 0.2  warn : no CUDA capable devices found
  IRAY 0.2  info : using CPU backend with 2 threads 

Thanks to Nicolas Holst for this post.