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.

Maya 2014 SP4 and Maya 2014 Ext SP2

I wanted to apologize for website issues currently affecting our Maya users who are attempting to download the latest service pack.  To help ease some of the pains while we sort out our new support site I have provided direct links to each build.  

Windows:

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/Maya_2014_SP4/Autodesk_Maya_2014sp4_dlm.sfx.exe

Mac Os X:

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/Autodesk_Maya_2014sp4_English_Japanese_SimplifiedChinese_MAC_OSX.dmg

Linux:

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/Autodesk_Maya_2014sp4_English_Linux_64bit.gz

 

Folks with subscription access can get your extension service pack from the subscription site.

www.autodesk.com/subscription

 

Once again sorry for the troubles.

 

Cheers!

Nelson

 

 

 

Maya 2014 Sp2 released

We have released a new service pack for Maya 2014.  Please head over to the Autodesk site to download the application corresponding to your OS.

Many fixes have been made so please take a look at the release notes or the list below to see if any effect your workflow.

What's Fixed 

Bug Number	Description
Animation
MAYA-23241	Fixed crash undoing the merge of animLayers.
MAYA-25123	Fixed HIK regression causing spine joints to have unexpected transform values after characterization.
MAYA-25127	Fixed hang in Graph Editor when massive numbers of keys are selected.
MAYA-25620	Animation not updated when setting a key with animation layers.
MAYA-25717	Fixed skinCluster binding issue.
MAYA-26089	Fixed issue with smooth skin clusters and popping vertices when painting weights.
MAYA-26093	HIK : Baking auxiliary effector is corrupting referenced file.
MAYA-26221	Global scale in HumanIK not working on Mac and Linux.
Modeling
MAYA-21980	Pre-selection highlighting flickers when camera-based selection is enabled.
MAYA-22931	Detach edge breaks locked vertex normal.
MAYA-23694	Fixed mismatch of vertex normal method on shape node.
MAYA-22948	Selection Constraints do not work with Marquee.
MAYA-25787	Fixed crash when using Artisan on a mesh with no UVs.
MAYA-25797	Fixed a crash when changing display mode after lattice work.
MAYA-26348	Remove the In View Messaging for soft select radius for better performance of Soft Selection Tool.
MAYA-26500	polyEdgeToCurve crashes when evaluating inputComponents if inputMesh is invalid.
MAYA-24840	Fixed an undo crash when using the Multi-Cut tool.
MAYA-25524	Polygon Constraint window "Reset and close" button randomly crashes
MAYA-26697	Surface Precision set to “High” causes NURBS in shaded mode to be drawn offset
MAYA-23938	Quad draw: construction history is always created when using quad draw and a transform constraint
MAYA-23070	Crash when doing a polySeparate on some meshes
Platforms
MAYA-24829	Maya on Mac OS X hangs on exit in TCIPClient::shutdown
MAYA-26539	CERs on Mac OS X 10.9 cannot get assigned to buckets
Dynamics
MAYA-18962	Maya crashes when creating Lattice deformer for nParticle that has been converted to Polygon.
API
MAYA-20555	Panel tear off causes crash when a plug-in tool is active.
MAYA-24579	Fixed a problem in the .Net dagexplorer (wpfexample) sample plug-in.
MAYA-25019	Can't unload plug-ins that are derived from MPxDataType.
File Referencing - Reference Edits
MAYA-25752	File referencing: post-load callback massively increasing load times (complicated by nodeEditorPanel data).
MAYA-26262	Fixed a crash with export as reference.
MAYA-26477	Parent reference edits are not persistent.
mental ray
MAYA-20369	Fixed a problem where Mayatomr plug-in was causing the scene to prompt to save even when it was unchanged.
Rendering
MAYA-25074	Fix for UV Texture Editor with legacy style plug-in shaders.
MAYA-25246	Fixed crash after selecting Use Selected Lights for lighting on new scene.
MAYA-24958	Fixed a crash with batch playblasts on Mac OS X  if "-showOrnaments" is disabled.
MAYA-24396	Camera aim and up cannot be selected in Viewport 2.0.
MAYA-24395	Skinning: Mesh display is incorrect when zooming out of Viewport 2.0 while in the Paint Skin Weights Tool.
MAYA-26489	Batch render does not render ornaments (HUD) when using the Maya Hardware 2.0 renderer.
MAYA-24121	"Show ornaments" toggle does not work in Viewport 2.0 playblasts
MAYA-17875	Apparent interaction between viewport plug-ins and mental ray IBL “Hardware Exposure”
Scene Assembly
MAYA-24498	Fixed scene assembly issue where some edits would persist unexpectedly when switching representations.
MAYA-25047	MPxAssembly node compute method is now invoked when necessary.
UI General
MAYA-25920	Removed a previous windows optimization that is no longer needed, which caused a slowdown in the Graph Editor on  Mac OS X and Linux.

 

Stack Trace for Maya on Linux

Issue

Running Maya in debug mode and sending a stack trace can help Autodesk troubleshoot some crashes. Maya uses GNU Debugger (usually called GDB), which when activated, lists every procedure happening within Maya.  This information can then be sent to Autodesk to aid in further troubleshooting.

Note: a Linux terminal must be used to run Maya in this mode.

Solution

1. In a terminal go to the directory where Maya is installed, typically "cd /usr/autodesk/maya2009-x64/bin"

2. Run Maya under GDB.  Type in "./maya -d gdb"

3. This will launch GDB and load the maya.bin file (GDB itself does not have a UI).

4. Once GDB loads you will get a prompt. You will now need to launch Maya using one of the two options below:

• "r" (for example, will run Maya in GUI mode)
• "r -prompt" (for example, command line parameter to Maya of -prompt will run in prompt mode)

5. If Maya crashes you will come back to the GDB prompt in the terminal.

6. To get stack trace you will need to do the following:

1. Type "bt" to get stack trace details.
2. Type "threads #" to switch to a specific thread number. These can range between a variety of numbers. Start at 1 and go up from there until "bt" does not show any more details.

The information printed out in the terminal should be copied and pasted into an email and sent to Product Support through your service request.

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

Around the Corner: a new M&E developer blog

There is a new blog in town!  Around the Corner, is a blog dedicated to
plug-in developers working with Maya, MotionBuilder, FBX and any other
technology that strikes our fancy at the moment of blogging.

This blog is authored by Cyrille Fauvel and me (Kristine Middlemiss, I am
sad to say I am departing this blog :()

To tell you a little about our selves we are 2/6’s of the Media & Entertainment worldwide team of API gurus providing technical services through the Autodesk Developer Network.

When either of us comes across some information on programming for Autodesk
technologies that we think you’ll be interested in, then you can expect it to
be posted here. That will be technical (how-to) solutions derived from
answering questions from ADN partners and from Autodesk forum users, sample
projects, white papers screencasts, conference presentation material, and other
information derived from our work. This blog is a vehicle to put lots of up to
date information in one place so you can easily find what you need to solve
your programming problems.

Enjoy!

Kristine

Some tips for users trying to get Maya 2012 and Fedora 16 running

While we have only officially qualified Maya 2012 on Redhat Enterprise 5.5 and Fedora 14 we do have users who enjoy the latest and greatest of what Fedora 16 with Gnome 3 can offer. 

I have recently gone through the installer myself and while I have run into some minor hiccups mainly around the new implementation of Gnome things are working out great with Maya. 

Below are simply some notes I have made along the way.

This is a good time to make sure folks are aware that we do not qualify Fedora 16 so there can be some un-foreseen issues that I did not come across.  With that said, I am simply a Linux guy who enjoys sharing information and hopefully this will help anyone who comes across these issues.

General Maya tips

The next few sections cover general Maya instalation issues you may come across when trying to get Maya up and running.  These focus specifically on Maya issues and are valuable even for folks not running Fedora.  Further down I have more specific issues around Fedora 16.

The missing packages for Maya 2012

The installer and licensing had no issues however when I went to launch Maya I hit a typically wall of missing packages.  During my default installation of Fedora I only needed to install the ones in the command below.

More packages can be missing so a full rpm list is in our installation documentation page 18.

     yum install tcsh libXp xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859*

Installing Nvidia drivers

I am fan of using Nvidia drivers that are downloaded straight from the source. For us to install Nvidia drivers Nouveau must be disabled.  More details about what Noveau is can be found here.  Before disabling Nouveau we need to get OS kernels updated and make sure everything is matching. 

Command below will do the trick.  First install missing packages needed for Nvidia drivers for compiling/intall and then update everything.

     yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers
     yum update kernel*

Remove / disable nouveau drivers from kernel initramfs

     Backup old initramfs nouveau image
     mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
 
     Create new initramfs image
     dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

Reboot

Now, to install the actual Nvidia drivers you must have the X session closed.  Essentially, if you are reading this on the machine which will be running Maya, than the drivers will not install.

You can simply hit ctrl-alt f5 to launch a terminal session and type.
    
     init 3

This will kill any live X session. 

Login as root user again in the terminal.  At this point you are ready to install the drivers. cd into the driver directory and run.  Before running the installer we need to make sure binutils is installed.

     yum install binutils

Now install the Nvidia drivers
 
     sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-XXX.XX.run

If everything works out you will see prompts to install the drivers.  Follow the instructions on screen. Since noveau is still enabled Nvidia will request you to reboot once more after it finishes creating a modification in /etc/modprobe.d

After the reboot just follow the steps by going back into terminal and doing init 3 to install the drivers again.

 

To Overlay or Composite

There are a couple of options to operate Maya's UI or Linux Windows session in.  The first being Hardware Overlays while the second option is a Composite mode.

I will not cover which is better because some folks will have personal or business needs as to why one is used over the other.  However, I will show both examples below. The one thing to remember is that you should be on one or the other.  The two do not work together.

For the Hardware Overlay option, the following will need to be added into the device section of your xorg.conf file located in /etc/X11 folder.

  Option "Overlay" "On"

After you add this line you will need to restart the X session for the changes to take effect.  Launch Maya and the hotbox should be using hardware overlays.  Usually you will see a dithered and partially transparent hotbox.

For those using the above hardware overlay option make sure that the composite is disabled in the xorg.  Composite desktop will overwrite the overlays option.

If you wish to use composite desktop instead, simply set the overlay option above to off and make sure the following is at the bottom of the xorg.conf file.

  Section "Extensions"
  Option "Composite" "On"
  EndSection

Once again a restart of X is required.  When using this mode you will need to set another option in the windows session for composite to work correctly or you will get alot of flashing UI when the hotbox is activated.  Composite must be enabled be enabled in the Windows X session. There are several windows managers around but I will go with the my prefered which is using Gnome default Metacity window manager.

If you followed all the steps above than the gconf-editor will already be installed.  As a root user in a terminal launch.

     gconf-editor

Go to apps->metacity->general and enable the compositing_manager check box.  Generally a reboot is not required for this change.  Simply Launch Maya and the hotbox will be non-dithered.

General Linux tips with Fedora 16

While the above steps go Maya up and running nicely in Fedora 16 or even other distobutions under Gnome 3 there are some other things I have done to modify my Linux setup and general look and feel.  Once again I simply wrote down as I made some changes.

 

Missing title bar minimize button

Under Gnome 3 some things have changed with the general look of title bar of applications.  By default the minimize buttons are gone.  How do we get this back?

     yum install gconf-editor

You can now launch this in a terminal by typing

     gconf-editor

In the configuration editor drill down through desktop->gnome->shell->windows

Modify 'button_layout' and set the values as ':minimize,maximize,close'

For the settings to take affect you must log out and back in.

Getting Gnome Sesison Windows behavior to use super+ instead of alt+

Prior to fedora 16 there was a GUI option in Gnome to enable this.  With fedora 16 you can get this done in a terminal. This will change Gnomes default action of using alt as the main key to do things such as move windows and so on.   The command below will pass this control to the super key (windows key)

gconftool-2 --set --type string /apps/metacity/general/mouse_button_modifier '<Super>'

How do I change the runlevel?

systemd has the concept of targets which is a more flexible replacement for runlevels.

Run level 3 is emulated by multi-user.target. While Run level 5 is emulated by graphical.target. runlevel3.target is a symbolic link to multi-user.target and runlevel5.target is a symbolic link to graphical.target.

You can switch to 'runlevel 3' by running

    systemctl isolate multi-user.target (or) systemctl isolate runlevel3.target

You can switch to 'runlevel 5' by running

    systemctl isolate graphical.target (or) systemctl isolate runlevel5.target

How do I change the default runlevel?

systemd uses symlinks to point to the default runlevel. You have to delete the existing symlink before creating a new one

    rm /etc/systemd/system/default.target

Switch to runlevel 3 by default

    ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target

Switch to runlevel 5 by default

    ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/graphical.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target

I dont like all the flashy Gnome 3 stuff

While we should imbrace the new looks I am finding a bit difficult to wrap around it and want some of my older options back.  The good news is that there is a fallback feature which removes all grahical fun stuff.  The Fallback mode can be enabled by going to System Settings > System Info. In this window, you'll be able to activate - force - Fallback Mode. The next time you login, you will have a more standard view with menus just like previous versions.

No desktop icons.... no problem!

Gnome 3 by default hides all the desktop items.  You can get them back by installing a tweak tool which enables them.  In a terminal as root install gnome-tweak-tool

     yum install gnome-tweak-tool

You can now run the tool as a regular user.  To run it in a terminal simply type.

     gnome-tweak-tool 

When the Advance settings window shows up click on Desktop category and enable "Have file manager handle desktop"

The Bootloader

Fedora 16 also introduces a new bootloader application.  Grub2 is now the default bootloader to control which OS will be used during system start up.  The introduction of Grub2 has made things a bit trickier to modify the settings done during the initial OS install.  Older version of grub simply involved modifying a cfg file to get things corrected as to startup timeouts and which OS to boot.  Below are the simple steps to help you switch the default from one OS to another using grub2.

Running this command will build the grub menu after any changes have been made.  This command will automatically find the kernels and initrds in the boot directory and add them to a cfg file using the parameters given in /etc/default/grub

    grub2-mkconfig > /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

To set the default OS simply modify /etc/default/grub file.  This can be edited in any text editor as root.
 
The line you need to add or change is:

   GRUB_DEFAULT=OS Name

You can either set OS Name or a numeric entry.

   GRUB_DEFAULT="Fedora (3.2.13.fc16.x86_64)"

To get a list of the menuentry simply use:

     grep menuentry /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

The list will print out in the terminal and the first one listed will be 0 or the OS name.

     GRUB_DEFAULT=0

That’s all I have on this post for now.  If I come across any other noteworthy issues I will update this post. I would also like to say that I cannot take full credit in these workarounds.  Most of these can easily be found roaming the internet and for that thank you.

Cheers!

Nelson

How to get Tkinter to run in Maya 2012 with Linux

Tkinter is a Python GUI package which operates on top of Tcl/Tk.  The Tkinter .so is included with Maya’s packaged Python folder. For users on Linux running distributions like Redhat Enterprise 6 or Fedora 14 you will notice that the default version of Tcl and Tk are 8.5.  Running any Tkinter call within Maya’s ui will automatically prompt an error:

from Tkinter import *
root = Tk()

# Error: TclError: Can't find a usable init.tcl in the following directories:
/usr/share/tcl8.4 /usr/aw/maya2011-x64/lib/tcl8.4 /usr/aw/lib/tcl8.4 /usr/aw/maya2011-x64/library /usr/aw/library /usr/aw/tcl8.4.13/library /usr/tcl8.4.13/library /usr/share/tcl8.4

You will notice Maya is pointing to a version Tcl which is not installed and looking for directories which are not on the system.

The reason this occurs is because we compile Maya on the lowest possible setup for compliance.  Maya 2012 is based on Redhat Enterprise 5.  This simply means that the default Tcl and Tk version on this distribution are 8.4.  Unfortunately, this information is hardcoded into the _tkinter.so file included in the Maya python "lib-dynload" folder. This cannot be changed. So your only option at this point is to install the 8.4 version of the app.

There is no need to remove your current Tcl or Tk versions and the 8.4 version can be installed without any issues.  You will need to source these based on your distribution and get the rpm’s installed and Maya will than grab the proper directories in /usr/lib.

Let’s now focus on some actual work.  Below is a sample script which will build a GUI window with a button to build a sphere.  You will notice I added some threading commands.  The reason for this is to make sure that the Maya UI is still available and updated without having to wait for the python UI to close before updating the viewport.

import maya.utils
import maya.cmds as mc
import Tkinter as tk
import threading

def makeSphere( radius ):
     print "WOW that Sphere is great!"
     mc.sphere( radius=radius )

def makeMySphere():
     maya.utils.executeInMainThreadWithResult( makeSphere, 5 )

def UI():
    app = tk.Tk()
    btnCube = tk.Button(app, text="Make a special Sphere", command=makeMySphere )
    btnCube.pack()
    app.mainloop()

class MyThread ( threading.Thread ):
     def run ( self ):
          UI()

MyThread().start()

I hope this is helpful for anyone using Tkinter on Linux.  Please remember this was only tested on Linux so I am not sure what the behaviour is like on Windows.

There are also other options for building python GUI’s.  We have details in the Maya devkit for pyQt and I have also seen folks use wxPython.

Cheers!

Nelson

Global Symbol Evaluation

Are you working on Linux?

Have you ever seen a file with this *.sog extension in your plug-in directory?

Ever wonder what it is?

It is possible to force plug-ins to export their symbols by putting an additional file, with the same name as the plug-in with the extension '.sog' in the directory with the plug-in. This would cause the plug-in to be dlopened using the RTLD_GLOBAL flag.

The .sog extension is our own indication that a plug-in should be loaded with extra loader options.  The RTLD_GLOBAL flag.   Normally we don't set this flag so any functions will be known to the plug-in itself and not pollute the global name space.

Normal plug-in loading:

• pluginName.so

To load a plug-in with RTLD_GLOBAL flag included:

• pluginName.so
• pluginName.sog

The ending ‘g’ meaning global.

You need both files.  The .sog is there for existence only - can be a zero length file.

They should ensure the other plug-in that exports its functions has a .sog file to match that plug-in so it is loaded with global scope.

The presence of a .sog file will enable the plug-in symbols to be available for other plug-ins to use.

Cheers,

Kristine

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