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[RLM] [MacOSX] Setting solidangle_LICENSE on Yosemite
In Yosemite, Apple removed support for environment variables in launchd.conf, so you need to find another way to set global, system-wide environment variables. For example, if you want...
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[MtoA] Using set overrides to assign Arnold IDs to groups of mesh shapes
Arnold shapes have an id parameter that you can use to set up custom ID AOVs. kick -info polymesh.id node: polymesh param: id type: INT default: 0 For example, you can Object ID color mode of the...
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[RLM] [Arnold] Figuring out why a certain scene renders with a watermark
If suddenly some scenes render with a watermark, but others don’t, that probably means someone saved those scenes with Skip License Check enabled. A quick way to check this is with the Arnold log. If...
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[MtoA] Command-line compiling with Visual Studio 2010 Express
Open a Visual Studio Command Prompt (Start > All Programs > Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express > Visual Studio Command Prompt) Set up the environment for 64-bit compilation: CALL...
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[MtoA] [SItoA] Setting multiple Arnold parameters with a User Options string
If you want to set multiple Arnold parameters in a User Options string, you can use any whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines eg \n) that you would use in an actual ASS file. For example, this:...
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[MtoA] Mapping textures to Yeti hair
Like MtoA, Yeti exports UV coordinates in the uparamcoord and vparamcoord parameters, and you use these to map textures in the aiHair shader with the Uparam and Vparam extra attributes. For example, if...
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[MtoA] The case of the instant crash when I load MtoA
In this case, Maya 2015 (Windows) disappeared a few seconds after I clicked the MtoA Loaded check box in the Plug-in Manager. Eventually I tracked it down to this line in my pluginPrefs.mel:...
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The case of the missing PyMel debug log file
In several recent cases, I had to figure out why MtoA wouldn’t load on a render farm. The root cause turned out to be the PyMel debug log: ~/pymel.log If PyMel cannot find or open ~/pymel.log, that...
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The case of the “cannot remove alias” RuntimeError
In this case, mayabatch reported some runtime errors when loading a certain scene: # Traceback (most recent call last): # File "C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2015\scripts\mtoa\callbacks.py", line 415, in...
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[MacOSX] Troubleshooting with dtruss
In a previous post, I looked at how things could go wrong in the file ~/pymel.log wasn’t accessible. On Windows, this was fairly easy to track down using Process Monitor: On Mac OS X, I had to use...
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The case of the disappearing particles
In this case, nParticles (render type = point) weren’t visible behind a refractive plane: For the points render type, you get an Arnold points shape (with mode “disk”), so I exported an ASS file to see...
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[MtoA] Setting defaults for options and drivers
If you want to set default rendering options, or change the defaults for AOVs, you can use the hook functions provided by mtoadeploy/2015/scripts/mtoa/hooks.py. hooks.py provides a number of setup...
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[Arnold] System requirements: minimum Windows version
As of Arnold 4.2.3.1, the minimum Windows version is Windows 7. We no longer support Windows versions before Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This applies to all plug-ins (such a MtoA 1.2.02 and...
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[MtoA] Finding your Arnold log file
When you enable file logging, it can seem a bit of a mystery where the .log files end up. You may find log files in different folders of your project, like the scenes folder, or the sourceimages...
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[Arnold] Standard shader AOVs and shading trees
Here’s a question asked recently. Given a shading tree like the one below, why don’t AOVs like diffuse_direct include the blended color from the Blend Color node? The answer: because it is the Standard...
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[MtoA] Flushing the texture cache from Python
MtoA provides an arnoldFlushCache command (and the Arnold > Flush Caches menu uses that command). You can call it from Python like this: import maya.cmds as cmds cmds.arnoldFlushCache(...
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[MtoA] Instancing lights
If you want to instance lights in Maya, use Duplicate Special. MtoA will correctly translate those instances to Arnold (as copies, not instances, because Arnold itself doesn’t support light instances)....
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[MtoA] Is there an ARNOLD_PROCEDURAL_PATH environment variable?
No, there isn’t. HtoA recently added support for an ARNOLD_PROCEDURAL_PATH environment variable, but neither MtoA or Arnold itself support ARNOLD_PROCEDURAL_PATH. Here’s a few things you can do: If...
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ERROR | [mtoa] [xgenTranslator] Could not find xgen_procedural in search path...
This error ERROR | [mtoa] [xgenTranslator] Could not find xgen_procedural in search path $ARNOLD_PLUGIN_PATH happens only when MtoA is first loaded, and it can be safely ignored. It doesn’t cause any...
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[MtoA] MayaFile node uses a default color for missing textures
Here’s something important to remember when you’re debugging a scene… By default, the MayaFile node uses a default color if a texture is missing. This means the render won’t abort because of missing...
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