Maya Station

Using ffmpeg to convert image sequence to video file

Maya users on Mac OS can run into problems when trying to get a MOV file output of their image sequences. This video demonstrates a fast and easy workaround using FFmpeg.

 

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

Viewport 2.0 not refreshing with UV changes

There are some instances in Maya 2013 in which a user is modifying the UV of a particular mesh but viewport 2.0 is not updating as these changes occur. Image below shows viewport failing to register the changes made in the UV Texture Editor.  While this is a known issue with our development team we have a simple workarond that can be used.

 

 

While one method is to simply switch back to the default viewport it may not show some of the more advance features such as a normal maps unless you go into the shading network and re-map the texture to show up in default viewport.

The other option is to simply make some changes to the UV's in Viewport 2.0 and force the refresh of viewport 2.0.  in command line simply use the command below to reset the viewport.

ogs -reset

This can be added to a hotkey or even a shelf button for quicker access.

Cheers!

Nelson

Hotfix for Turtle 2013

We have released Turtle 2013 Hotfix 1. This particular hotfix addresses a problem users on Mac OS would run into when in trying to access the attribute editor and fail when Turtle was being used.

Please follow the link below to the Autodesk site and download the package.

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL19499684

Cheers!
Nelson

mental ray Satellite 2013 Windows not working on machines

We have had users report that mental ray satellite 2013 is not running on some Windows 7 machines.  Users have reported errors of failed connection to the satellite machine or even running the service will fail with errors.

This seems to be occurying on machines that have missing Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package which contains needed libraries to run some of our prodcts correctly. 

We provide the installer (vc redist_x64.exe) with our discs and our downloads. The downloaded package generally extracts to "C:\Autodesk" directory. After doing the extraction browse to the Maya directory in "C:\Autodesk" you will find the 3rd Party installer in "\3rdParty\x64\VCRedist\2010SP1\vc redist_x64.exe"

After the package gets installed everything should be working.

More information about Microsoft's Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package can be found here.

I just wanted to thank our users for making us aware of this issue.

Cheers!

Nelson

 

Backburner 2012.1.1

I have some great news for our Backburner users who are running into issues submitting jobs from Maya.  We have just posted a public release of Backburner 2012.1.1.  There are some key fixes and I highly recommend you upgrade if you are running into any of the issue listed below.

The download can be found in the Autodesk.com site here.

I highly recommend you uninstall the current version and remove all Backburner preferences before installing the newest cut.

After you install and get backburner up and running attempt to submit a job.  If you still seem to be getting a connection refused error when submitting a job, try entering 7347 as the port value and submit again.

Setting this value will pass the default setting where cmdjob uses multicast to connect to the manager and fails.

Bug Number	Description
MAYA-7652	No connection could be made, target machine refused error while submitting a job or if a port was manually entered in the Submission window
MAYA-8238	Manager fails to launch with machines with multiple network adapters
MAYA-8117	Problem closing Manager on Windows 7 64-bit operating system
MAXX-4177	Manager creates duplicate job handles when multiple jobs are sent within one second of each other

Best of luck!

Nelson

 

 

Getting BackBurner rendering on Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously

Every now and then we do get asked if BackBurner does cross platform rendering.  The simply answer is yes but there is indeed some setup involved to make sure things work.  

In this video I explain two key components to get this up and running.  The first is setting the correct path to Maya's render command so both Windows and Mac OS can use the same command when submitting the job.  The second task here is to mount a samba drive on Mac OS.   In the video I show a simple method of gettng this done but you will loose the mount at reboot.  To keep the mount through reboot I suggest you lookingto launchctl command and how to use it.

Hope this helps!

 

Creating simple fog in Maya with mental ray

A very short video showing users how to create a simple fog effect with a spolight. Using the mental ray transmat and parti volume nodes are the building blocks needed to get you on your way to creating volumetric fog effect.

Hope you enjoy.

 

Virtual Memory: a performance issue often forgotten

Are you working with large scenes or with big textures? Are you experiencing software crashes?

Possible scenario: You are working on a computer with Windows 7 and 6GB of RAM. When you load the scene, the memory usage is somewhere around 5GB. If you try to start a batch-render process Maya may crash.

Socket error creating command port

We see this come through support once in awhile and I wanted to use this blog post to try and explain what can be happening to cause this issue.

First, some quick background. Even though Maya is rendering locally it still depends on these sockets for communication. Maya will simply use this communication channel like a two radio communication between the batch render application and Maya. So what happens in a network environment is that Maya will actually routes itself through the network back to your machine.

This is why you must to make sure that the firewall settings are allowing the mayabatch process through regardless of being on a network or not. The firewall is the most simplest solution but we do run into atleast another two scenarios in support.

1. You may also have two Maya session loaded, maybe a background render that has not completed and is locking the port. To fix this either wait till the process is completed for submitting another bacth or check your tasks and kill off the rogue mayabatch.

2. The other is a DNS issue, we find this generally on the Mac side of things. We have seen this after a system has picked up a new IP from the server but the DNS has not refreshed itself and is now pointing to another machine. Since the machine is loaded on the network it has a difficult time finding itself. Generally this issues fixes itself after a few hours.

If that does not happen to work out, you can try flushing the DNS cache on your local machine manually.

In a Mac OS terminal simply run the following. You may need to reboot afterwards.

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

Hope this helps!

Cheers!