Scene won't open

[zhenka22]

Hi all.

I have a scene that is considerably larger than all my other ones. It's about 45 Mb. I was working on it earlier on today. Tried to get back into it just then and it's not happening for me.

Loading bar gets to 98% and then Maya freezes up. Tried to import it into a new scene and exact same thing. Any suggestions for what i can do with this or is this scene lost?

Cheers

[barryk50]

try clicking on the 4 panel view button on the left side. this has happened to me a few times. the scene is loaded but it just isnt displayed. maybe this will help you.

[zhenka22]

No, I've had that happen to me before too man. This time Maya actually freezes up and does not respond to anything.

Literaly crashes out.

Any other suggestions? Anyone?

[sriram viswanathan]

open a new scene in maya and merge or import the original scene file into it, sometimes it might help....

(or)

if u have another pc with more ram or processing power u can try optimising items in it and saving it back

(or)

if u have some reference items in that scene which u guess might be corrupted, try not loading them - you can uncheck it in the open options.

(or)

using non -ui commands such as 'delete all poly smooth nodes` etc.. u can pass mel commands from the another maya file to optimize ur scene... passing ui commands might not work...

always try to save it in *.ma (maya ascii) format which is a un compressed format and even if ur file size is 100 mb, the opening time is greatly reduced by the ` decompressing and compressing time` taken by maya when opening or saving ur *.mb file


always try to save heavy scenes in bounding box or wireframe shading.... and before saving the file try to hide all memory consuming items... so that its faster while loading ...

if u r constantly working on heavy scene files, try increasing ur RAM (if u r interesed)... try to avoid opening multiple maya's which might make pc much slower... finally - ck whether maya has any issues like files missing, which is very rare... and optimise os for the best performace amap....

:)

[zhenka22]

Hey Sriram

I have tried importing it into another scene with no luck. Also, i suspect that processing power is not an issue. I run a Dual 3.2 Ghz, 2 Gig, Quadro FX 540. The loading bar jumps from 0 to 100 quiet quickly, it just freezes up once it gets to the end.

I have just simple polys in there (although a prety high count) and some procedural shaders. No lights have been setup. I did import a scene into this one earlier, deleted the geometry but kept the shaders, but at that point everything was still working fine.

I'm sure its not RAM, cause it was rendering out frames quick enough outta there. Must be some bug....

Any other takers?

[laxman]

First try renaming the file to anything else and then opening it. IF that doesn't work try deleting some temp files (actually don't delete anything, make a new folder on the desktop and move the files to that location)

Get rid of the temp files here:
C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Temp


and in this folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.SIRSYSTEM\Local Settings\Application Data

get rid of anything that has to do with alias (might be autodesk if you have v.8) and maya

Also if you have another computer, try loading the file there.

[zhenka22]

Hey Laxman, thanks for your response.

Tried renaming the scene but that didnt work. As for your other suggestion, I could no locate either folders that you specified. In fact, I ran a search and could not find any folder named 'Local Settings', and only a few 'temp' folders came up, one in the windows dir and a few in the Adobe CS2 Folder, thats all.

Where else could these files be?

[zhenka22]

Hey, I did find those folders (forgot to check the hidden files). Moved all the files outta there and still no results. I think i might just let this one go. There was about half a days work in there but it could be much worse...

Thanks everyone...

[zhenka22]

Just started working on the scene again and the same thing happened. Made a few changes to the original, saving all the time, all is good. Selected a high poly group, did a reduce of 30%. Wasnt instantaneous, but worked no worries. Decided to do another reduce, this time smaller like 15%, and Maya crashes.

Go into it again, reduce again at 30%, all good (save it). Trie another reduce again, maya crashes. Tried to open the file that was saved after the first reduce and same story as my original corrupt scene.

Man Maya ****s me!!!!!! After Effects is so much friendlier....

[zhenka22]

Sorry about the number of posts, but after further experimentation I have discovered that for some reason the poly reduce operation, regardless of the amount was corrupting the scene.

Simply deleting history after the reduction of the operation (before saving) has completely gotten rid of the problem.

Thanks everyone for your responses. You guys make learning a pioece of software like this bearable!

[laxman]

BTW, you should turn incremental save on. I usually put in on unlimited for the duration of one of my projects for reasons like these. I like to have MANY backups.

[zhenka22]

Thanks Laxman!

Will do...