Maya 2012 SAP: The CPU is maxed

Maya 2012 SAP: The CPU is maxed out if Maya is idle for more than 15 minutes 

This is a bug we reported earlier this week and luckily there's a work around for it. Thanks to Owen from the support team for the fast turn around! 

From MayaStation: 

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.

Come join us!

We are currently looking to recruit the following positions: • Experienced Gameplay Programmers • Network Programmers (Engine & Game) • Graphics Programmer • Gameplay Designer (ideally with Multiplayer FPS experience) • Cutscene Cinematics Animator • Character Modeller (Face & Head specialist) • Special FX / VFX Artist • Character Modeller • Tools Programmer Full details and requirements for these positions are on our website. cheers

MasterClass finally on Vimeo

Finally added the MasterClass to Vimeo for you all to enjoy... thanks for watching!
Autodesk MasterClass - Live Animation Binding from Mark Jackson on Vimeo.
Don't forget the Toolkit link below

MasterClass - New Maya cmds compatible version

After a number of requests I've gone through the MasterClass toolkit and made it backward compatible with Maya 2008 onwards (actually I've only run it back to 2009 but should still work on 2008). This is kind of tested but if you get any issues let me know and I'll fix them. Basically all I've done is to remove the PyMel calls and replace them with cmds, also made it Python 2.5 compliant.

Anyway, here's the link to the new AnimationBinderCmds.py module file. Install is easy, like the main class all you do is drop it into the Maya scripts folder, or any folder on the Maya scripts path, then in a Python Tab type: (with no tabs or spaces at the front of each line)

import AnimationBinderCmds as AB
AB.AnimBinderUI.Show()

Here's the link:


AnimationBinderCmds.py


Thanks for the interest

Mark

MasterClass update

I've been asked by a few people for a version of the MasterClass code that will run in earlier versions of Maya. The code I shipped originally relied on PyMel as well as Python 2.6 so wouldn't run under Maya 2009. I'm just finishing converting the module, no bug deal really. Hopefully should have a version ready in the next day or two.

cheers

Mark

Maya 2012 Subscription Advantage Pack is available for download

Maya 2012 SAP's pack released for download on subscription center:

The Autodesk® Subscription Advantage Pack for Autodesk® Maya® 2012 is available exclusively for Autodesk Subscription customers through download at the Autodesk Subscription Center.

Features:
Alembic point caching—Efficiently manage complex simulated and animated data, with the ability to read and write Alembic open computer graphics interchange format.

Bullet Physics—Create highly realistic soft body, rigid body, and ragdoll simulations with high-performance open source AMD Bullet Physics engine.

New Node Editor—Manage and debug complex node networks with a new Node Editor that features drag-and-drop connections, color coding, and three levels of detail.

Maya2012 Export Selected with DisplayLayers

This is just a warning for anybody who, like use uses Export Selected as an optimize method. Be warned, in 2012 if you select objects with display layers then exportSelected and then re-import, those display layers will be lost. Never had this before, 2011 was fine. This only showed up in 2012 and again, has broken another internal pipeline tool, another bug logged.