Maya Station

How to prevent Maya writing a "requires" command for a plug-in

Do you wonder why error messages about some plug-in or other that Maya cannot find continue to appear when you load a scene? Do you wish you could force Maya to unload a plug-in when saving your scene so you can avoid having it load again with the scene file ?

The objective of this tutorial is help you understand why Maya might include a reference to a plug-in in a scene file, and how to prevent Maya from doing so.

To complete this tutorial, you will need Maya 2015 SP6 or Maya 2015 Ext1 & SP6 because this Service Pack release includes two new MEL commands : unknownPlugin and unknownNode; this tutorial demonstrates how to use both of them.

Selection behaviour for set nodes

When a set node is selected, the default behaviour is for Maya to expand the selection to include all the items in that set.

If you want Maya to simply select the node and ignore its contents, use the -noExpand flag.

Maya's dirmap command

Unfortunately, there will be times in which moving OS will cause the directory structure of the file to break. It is always recommended to set project before a file is loaded in Maya's UI. When command line rendering using the "-proj" should be a requriement. If setting these and files are still missing and Maya is not locating files relative to the project the dirmap command can save time and help remap and textures.

What is dirmap? dirmap is a Maya command that will tell maya to scan and change directory structures as the scene is loaded.. This command works in two steps. First we need to enable it so Maya knows that path remapping must be done. The second part is to give the from and to arguemnts so maya can spot the bad path and replace it with the new one.

How to use this within the UI

1. Launch Maya and setup the dirmap commands so that Maya changes the paths when loading the scene. After loading re-save file. The commands would look something like.

dirmap -en true;
dirmap -m "C:/Users/cruzn/Desktop/trainingContent_troubleshooting//sourceimages/" "C:/Users/cruzn/Desktop/trainingContent_troubleshooting/missing/";

The above tells Maya that on load of a scene check for these parameters. If any hit the old path than the new path would be set. we can use multiple lines to remap texutres in different directories

Using dirmap without UI

If you wish to avoid having to load the scene in the UI and want to go straight in to rendering than the second option will be to make a *.mel procedure like.

global proc dirMap()
{
dirmap -en true;
dirmap -m "C:/Users/cruzn/Desktop/trainingContent_troubleshooting//sourceimages/" "C:/Users/cruzn/Desktop/trainingContent_troubleshooting/missing/";
}

Much like the first option you will need to change the paths to match the current folders.

Save this file as a dirMap.mel in C:/Users/username/maya/2013-x64\scripts. All the rendering machines will need this.

When rendering you will need to use the -preRender flag with the command to launch the script we created. It is case sensitive so please make sure you use the "dirMap" exactly as described in this example.

So with the paths set in the script and saved we can now render.

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2013\bin\Render.exe" -r mr -v 3 -preRender "dirMap" Z:\pathtest.mb

This will make the changes to the paths before render begins. I use verbosity 3 to capture warning such as missing textures.

Cheers!

Nelson

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.