Maya Station

Licensing Matchmover and Composite from Autodesk Maya or Autodesk 3ds Max ?

If you have Autodeks maya and Autodesk 3ds Max, and perhaps Autodesk Softimage installed on the same workstaition, you can tell Composite and Matchmover which application serves them with a license by setting these environment variables:

• ADSK_MATCHMOVER_LICENSE
• ADSK_COMPOSITE_LICENSE

For more information, please refer to this post on this blog.

Thanks,

Owen

Maya 2012 Hotfix 4

We have released another hotfix for Maya 2012.  Once again the Windows Hotfix is a incremental installer. So, no need to uninstall Maya before aplpying this update.  As for the other installers. They are full installs so please remove your current package before installing the hotfix.

Maya 2012 Hotfix 4 contains these fixes:

• Wacom mouse not working
• Unexpected flipping when pairBlend rotation interpolation is set to Quaternion
• Plug-in load failure because of Dependency Graph changes
• Crash with extruding a deleted face
• Keys in Graph Editor change value when moved along Timeline while zoomed out
• nCloth collision failures
• Relax intial state resets some nCloth damp values
• attrFieldSliderGrp - cc option does not work
• Graph Editor: can’t view multiple f-curves on a character set
• Nucleus no longer stops immediately when simulation is aborted
• Local wind problem
• Crash upon reading EXR file from Mudbox
• Cannot open Render View when opening Maya scene by double-clicking
• Preferences option “Hide extensions in filter” cause File Type Options on export to disappear

Composite 2012 Hotfix 4 contains:

• Preference: Can't change the padding in the version Preference tab
• Viewport : Hotkeys don't work in full frame mode
• Crash when converting a Cineon10bit to a Cineon16bit
• DPX rendering options should not be available for Cineon format
• Composition drops textures when rendered on multiple machines
• Render fails with error "Terminate handler called from thread"
• Performance issues related to graphics cards
• Performance degradation issues
• Vector paint performance issue

If you are running Maya 2012 on OS X 10.7, be aware of these limitations:

• Some PICT, SGI, and PSD image files fail to display
• Installer freezes at end of successful installation; is okay to force quit the installer
• Crash when using the High Quality viewport
• No refresh after performing some operations; force refresh by tumbling to resolve
• Library in home directory is hidden in 10.7; user must navigate to it using Terminal or Go to Folder functionality in the Finder

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=17478798&linkID=9242259

 

Cheers!

Nelson

Composite 2011 and Gen Arts Saphire plug-ins

Gen Arts Saphire plug-in works fine with Composite 2010.But it does not work with Composite 2011(64bit) running on 10.6 MAC OSX.

 

http://www.genarts.com/product/sapphire

 

The workaround is turn 64bit Composite 2011 to 32bit in MAC OSX 10.6.  You can start the application in 32 bit mode by going to the "Get Info" window and selecting "Open in 32 bit mode"

Maya Composite - command line render and ranges

Please note that in Maya Composite, unlike Maya, all the ranges are inclusive for the minimum and exclusive for the maximum.
When doing a command line render and using the -e flag it will seem like the last frame is not rendered. So when rendering from startFrame 1 to endFrame 10 Maya Composite will render frame 1 - 9 (inclusively)

Maya motion vector pass and composite workflow

The HD vr can be found here TS14168751

Toxik preferences files

If you are new to Maya Composite and are looking for the Preferences files, you can find them here:

 1) The "default.txproject" file which is located by default in

            C:\Users\UserName\Documents\toxik 

or within Toxik go to Edit ---> Project Preferences, under the Information Tab you will see the path and name of the file.

This file is your project preferences, so will hold for example, render settings and composition settings.  You can have multiple project preferences file and therefore can easily change project without have to reset all the paths.

2) The "preferences.txuser" file which is located by default in

        C:\Users\UserName\Documents\toxik\2010

This file is your user preferences, so will hold for example, color palette, hotkey catalog information and bookmarks.   This file is saved automatically when you change a preferences within Toxik, simply go to Edit ---> User Preferences

3) The"Hotkey Catalog.txsetup" which is located in

        C:\Users\UserName\Documents\toxik\2010\Hotkey Catalog

This file contains your hotkeys.  Within Toxik you can go to Edit --> Hotkey to see or update them

4) The "toxik.ini" file which is located in:

        C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Autodesk Toxik 2010\etc

This file contains the environment variables.  For example

    toxik::mediacache::factor 80

This file is only created when Maya Composite is started interactively, so for example, a render node will not have a toxik.ini.

Autodesk Maya Composite 2010 Hotfix 1

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=14186150&linkID=9242259

Autodesk Maya Composite 2010 Hotfix 1 includes a fix for severe playback speed performance degradation on MacPro machines with hyperthreading (MacPro 4,1).

Maya Composite file formats

Here is a list of supported files that can be imported into Maya Composite (Toxik ) 2010

Format File extension Supported bit depths for imports
Bitmap .bmp 8
Cineon .cin 10
DPX .dpx 8, 10, 16
HDR .hdr 32
IFF .iff 8, 16, 32
JPEG /JFIF .jpg, jpeg 8
Open EXR .exr 16 bit float, 32
Photoshop .psd 8
PICT .pict 8
PNG .png 8
QuickTime .mov 8
SGI .sgi 8
Targa .tga 8
TIFF .tif, .tiff 8, 16, 32

Maya composite and media cache

After ending a session the media cache doesn’t get cleared, only the information that is stored in the RAM gets cleared.
The media cache discards stored tiles as it is filled up and needs to make room for newer tiles being created as an artist works.
So if multiple artist are using the same machine it is a very good chance that one artist might clear another artist files stored in the media cache depending on the space allocated for the media cache.

Thanks toKen Larue for his tip

Upgrading Mac OS stops Maya composite from working

Once you make an upgrade to the OS, in some situations the file access permission get changed thus stopping the application from launching.
Please do the following
Navigate to the var/temp folder and make sure you hav the proper permission to the Toxik folder