Wrong identification of render engine in new empty scene

#1 · 6. March 2019, 2:06

I have an errors on opening newly created Maya 2018 empty scene.
This is how errors look like. After couple minutes of digging in plugin files, If I understood correctly, Prism identifies what current render
is (Arnold, Vray or Redshift) and then adds some bunch of nodes related to this render engine (in Prism_Maya_Functions.py).
So my problem is that Prism gives to my project Arnold nodes when I have Vray set as preferred renderer. This might be because Vray loads after scene is opened, and Maya can't setup Vray as preferred before it.
My workaround (or a crutch, I guess) is to rewrite empty project file with new scene from Maya directly.
I've tried to change empty file, with Vray in both Render Setting and Maya preferences, but not worked (due to scripts)

P.s.
I was looking for this kind of project manager for a long time. Such a life-saver! Many thanks to you, Richard 🙂

#2 · 6. March 2019, 21:08

When you open a scene Prism doesn't check what renderer is active. Only when you are going to start a render Prism will check the renderer and set some settings. You get these errors because there are some Arnold nodes in the empty scenefile, which comes with Prism. I created that empty scene from a default Maya installation with Arnold set up and it seems like Maya saved some default Arnold nodes to that scene. You will get those errors also when you open the empty file manually in Maya without Prism.

Is it a real error that prevents you from loading the scene or is it just a warning in the script editor?

Either way, you should be able to avoid that error by deleting or overwriting the empty scene file provided by Prism. That's not a workaround, but a feature that you can set up your own scene presets. Make sure you don't overwrite the empty file in the Prism installation folder (this is only the project preset for newly created Prism projects). The actual empty scene that gets loaded from the Project Browser is in your current Prism project folder under \00_Pipeline\EmptyScenes\EmptyScene_Maya2018.ma

#3 · 7. March 2019, 1:45

Thanks for explanation!

Warning in the separate window. I've checked 2017 version and everything's alright.

I didn't know that empty scene files are created for each project. After overwriting them in project folder everything's fine 🙂
Thanks for help!

#4 · 7. March 2019, 23:52

I'll try to remove the Arnold nodes from the empty scenes in the next update then.

If I remember correctly in Maya 2017 Arnold wasn't the default renderer in Maya, which is probably why there are no Arnold nodes in that scene.