Autodesk Maya

In this article I will show you how to deal with another Autodesk Maya problem that happens from time to time — Error: File contains unknown nodes or data, which prevents users from saving their files in desired Maya format. 

On Siggraph'2011 conference, that took place in Vancouver between 7-11 August, Autodesk announced the upcoming update for Maya 2012, called Advantage Subscription Pack. Looks like releasing such updates with new fresh features becoming a tradition for Autodesk from 2011 software line that also had bonus updates like this, first available only for Subscription Program members.

Autodesk continues to supply it's adepts with new portions of updates and bug fixes for Maya 2012 — this time, unlike the almost useless Hotfix 3, new Hotfix 4 that was released July, 29 can offer something more than just Simplified Chinese support and has some real bug fixes.

Autodesk company recently released their next "hot" update for its popular 3d software packet Autodesk Maya 2012. Hotfix 3 features only one specified change — Maya 2012 with this update received support for Simplified Chinese language in interface.

Autodesk Maya 2012 is a great piece of 3D modeling software, still it's not free of bugs and annoying errors that could poison lives of fellow 3D artists. For example, one of the common errors in Maya 2012 is a disappeared RenderView menu buttons, also known as "empty renderview window", "blank renderview" or "renderview not found" syndrome. Fortunately, "setParent: object ‘renderView’ not found" error can be fixed very easily. Read how!

Autodesk company released their second "hot" update for Maya 2012, which is called Autodesk Maya 2012 Hotfix 2. This update includes several important bug and error fixes.
Hotfix 2 is cumulative update, what means that it's featuring all of the fixes from Hotfix 1 — if you missed first update, you don't need to install it, use just Hotfix 2.

Autodesk released updated set of additional tools and scripts called Bonus Tools for Maya 2012.
Also Allegorithmic company made available for public download their Substance Bonus Tools for Maya 2012 — set of 25 additional materials and scripts for Substance Procedural Textures plugin, which is integrated into Maya 2012.

Autodesk company continues " glorious" tradition of Maya 2011 that had five (!) updates during it's life cycle, including three hotfix releases, one Service Pack and Subscription Advantage Pack, and after just 3 weeks from initial release Hotfix 1 for Maya 2012 is out. This update is relatively small and provides just few new features and bug fixes. It seems to be a sin to complain, but I personally prefer strong initial releases, not many updates.

Probably, one of the most common question about Maya is this one: — Where is my mental ray?! Any Maya user faced this problem at least once, and beginner 3D Artist is easy to be confused with this. He look in Render Settings menu and there is no any sign of mr anymore. So — what to do for bring it back and why mental ray disappears so sudden anyway? Read the answer next.

Autodesk officially announced new version of Maya — Maya 2012. Products of 2012 line have release date set to April ( rumors says 8th ), and while we waiting for it — I propose to take a look on what's new will be in Maya 2012. New version, as expected, introduces a couple of new features and enhancements of tools, including those that first was introduced in Maya 2011, and some of them are really exciting ( enhanced Viewport 2.0, for example ).

Again and again we faced the problem when some software gets relatively small update and it's plugins suddenly stops working. Bonus Tools for Maya 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack not become an exception and didn't work if installed as is, even if in Maya 2011 Service Pack 1 they work just fine. Fortunately there is a easy fix for this and with some manipulations Bonus Tools can be installed to work with Maya 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack.

For some time now Maya 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack is available to artists. As the name implies, Subscription Advantage Pack is intended to be a some kind of reward for Autodesk Subscription program participants, who can expect some bonuses and goodies for their loyalty. Next I will tell about those "goodies" that Autodesk offers in this Maya update — and some of them are really cool.

As Maya 2011 users may know, in this release of a popular 3D software packet user interface was almost completely rewritten and now is based on widely known in some circles Qt framework. Along with this default color scheme is changed to dark grey, which is likely pretty well accepted by users, but still some of them may like to have good old white color scheme. Fortunately developers provided us possibility to tweak this and have old-style color scheme for those who want it.

Maya 2011 and Mudbox 2011 are promoted by Autodesk as complementary tools, suited to be both a part of the artist's workflow. For this purpose in this 3D software packets even was implemented special menu items for easy exchange of data between Maya and Mudbox — Send to Maya and Export Selected to Mudbox. Of course, there is no any magic in this process and what exactly this menu items do — they export current scene as FBX file in temporary folder, launch ( if it's not already running ) corresponding application and open temp FBX file in this app. But there is one serious import performance problem with such approach by default...

Recently first service pack for Maya 2011 was released. It contains all previous fixes from Hotfix releases ( there were 3 of them ) and new ones. Now it's good time to switch over to new version of Maya for all those, who unable to do that previously due to bugs or something like that.

Download Maya Service Pack 1 from Autodesk web-site. Release Notes is available too, containing complete list of fixed bugs.

Next, I will briefly cover some of new features of Maya 2011, so this maybe will help to decide, is it worth to switch over or not.