MAYA 2015: Worst upgrade ever!

[oxenburgh2011]

I have been told my MacBook Pro 2013, 16GB RAM, 1tb SSD, 750m GPU is not rated for MAYA 2015.

FINE!

So, I buy a Mac Pro 2013, 64GB RAM, and an AMD D500 GPU which is Certified! Yet not only do I have the same problems with the Torus crashing the app BUT when I checked the Preferences Autodesk MAYA 2015 does not see the computer model which is does with the unrated MacBook Pro but also does not see the full GPU that is certified by Autodesk for MAYA 2015! It claims I only have well under half of one of the 2 D500 GPUs.

It's a dreadful upgrade and I spent good money on a MacPro on the recommendation of Autodesk specs claiming the D500 was certified BUT it's not!

Tech support may well be decent people but some might think Autodesk has certified the Mac Pro 2013 with a D500 but it's bogus......do not buy a Mac Pro 2013 with D500 dual GPU if you expect to see a quality upgrade. Adobe can see the D500 even though it does not fully support AMD, Apple software can see the 3GB appx of VRAM too, hardware tests can see it......but not Autodesk MAYA 2015

The GUI is the worst of all upgrades since 2012 too. 

A mess.

[lucericr]

Hello,

many of us in the Maya team develop on MacBook Pros. Are you saying that Maya crashes simply creating a torus?  If so I'd investigate something on your side -- user preferences, plug-ins,- because Maya 2015 runs pretty well on the mac.

About the feedback on the current hardware, are you talking about GPU cache user preference page?  If so, I believe that tab only shows what that feature will use, which is on GPU with a maximum of 1 gig of VRAM. It's not important to the proper functionning of Maya, it's only debugging feedback for the GPU Cache feature.

[oxenburgh2011]

Thanks for answering because I am getting support but they seem, via email, to be confused that a Mac Pro 2013 D500 are dual GPU chips.

I find it odd that the Preference-GPU shows nothing for model or make of computer, nothing for the dual GPUs, a driver I cannot find which is meant to be provided by Apple yet does not comport with the drivers shown in the complete hardware list About This Mac.

The crash is simple, I create from Nurbs a Torus, then I click on the last icon in Deformation and try to apply it and it crashes.

I also only get crash data from Apple and only a window on relaunch from Autodesk merely asking what I was up to.

As for the MacBook Pro 2013 I've been told clearly this computer is NOT supported.

That is why I bought the 6 core Mac Pro 2013 with 64Gb of RAM  and using the certified AMD D500.

So when I see that Maya 2015 reports nothing for the hardware and gives utterly the wrong amount of VRAM for even one GPU and no computer name I assume something is wring.

Why for my susbscription fee cannot a tech call, take control of my computer, check the preferences and see how easy it is to make Maya crash? I'm sure I am doing something wrng but unless someone actively looks I'll never know as no CERs are produced for me to send.

Sorry for the ramble but certifed by Autdoesk should mean my computer and GPUs show up and a simple torus can be "deformed" as I can in Maya 2014. Until then I can't use anything but the Trial version.

This is the first time I have had any problems from 2012-14  except with LTU issues in OSX 10.9.x

[bourque]

Hi,

Thanks for the report about the torus and the soft-mod tool. I can confirm that I can reproduce the crash on a rMBP. We have logged it on our side and we'll look into it soon.

Just to elaborate on what was mentioned above, VRAM detection is happening in two places:

1) when VP2 starts up, it detects how much video memory is present on the primary GPU (Maya currently only uses a single GPU even in a dual GPU machine). To confirm the number that is being reported, you can start Maya on the command line to see all the application output (or look into the mac console). You'll see a line like:

Initialized VP2.0 renderer {
  Version : 5.3.1.0. Feature Level 3.1.
  Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M OpenGL Engine
  Vendor ID: 4318. Device ID : 0xFD5
  Driver : 2.1 NVIDIA-8.24.9 310.40.25f01.
  API : OpenGL V.2.
  Max texture size : 16384 * 16384.
  Max tex coords : 8
  Shader versions supported (Vertex: 3, Geometry: 3, Pixel 3).
  Shader compiler profile : (Best card profile)
  Active stereo support available : 0
  GPU Memory Limit : 1024 MB.
  CPU Memory Limit: 15564.8 MB.
}

2) there is a plugin called the gpuCache, which has it's own VRAM detection logic. There is a preference panel for that, so if it doesn't detect correctly, you can override it with the known value for your particular machine. If you are not using the gpuCache, this won't affect anything else in Maya.

[oxenburgh2011]

Thanks for all your work on this. 

I tried writing in the correct VRAM value in the preference but MAYA 2015 will not allow me. Maybe I am using the wrong dialogue box?

So how do I change the vlues to act like the certified GPU Autodesk claims works.

Got this from tech support today:

"That being said, there is a Change Request logged against this in Maya 2014 and 2015 on MacPro with certain cards.

MAYA-35582 - Graphic card info cannot be detected correctly by gpuCache on the new Mac Pro"

I am not an expert enough but it seems the D500's are not quite certified despite Autodesk claiming this was so?

Seems I should have bought an HP Z820 and added a nVidia GPU. I wonder though how Adobe manages to see my GPU.

I am extrmely upset, I might just as well have bought a D700 because I wanted to have a certified GPU I went for the D500 instead.

I feel let down by Autodesk hardware online certification but thanks for your help.

[lucericr]

The "GPU cache" user preference page is for the Gpu Cache plugin that is used to stream Alembic files on the GPU. Do you use this feature?  It's not essential for that  plugin to detect the name of your GPU, and it's not important to maximize its VRAM parameters unless you are streaming very large Alembic files.  The most important thing is for Viewport 2.0 to detect and use your GPU.

[WindXu]

Hi:

About changing VRAM in GPU Cache preference, I think you did it at a wrong place. "Hardware information" is just displaying the graphic card config such as the model, driver version and its video memory. It is not editable.

In order to change the VRAM used by gpuCache, you need to change the values under "VRAM Management" section, like "Maximum VRAM for All Cache Buffers". It controls the maximum VRAM used by gpuCache.

For more details, please see the user guide:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-0F340CD7-FDE1-4F64-ADCA-52687835BC90

Thanks a lot!

Wind

[oxenburgh2011]

Sadly Tech support has found out that indeed MAYA 2015 does not "see" the Mac Pro 2013 and the D500 gpus.

I'll check out your link because who knows but so far Tech support has not suggested this will work.

However, I'm assured a patch will be coming but then it seems a mere neophyte has caught this real problem despite hardware certification for computer and gpu claims otherwise...a simple check of preferences for MAYA 2015/2014 would have shown MAYA is "blind" to the hardware it's running on.

However, thanks for the help!

[musab.almarri]

how do I know that view port 2 is detecting both gpus ? , i have the same problem i got a maxed out mac pro with the D700 and maya 2015 is not seeing it .

how do I gurantee that maya 2015 is utlizing both gpus at their maximum if it possible ? . 

[bourque]

Maya 2015 will only use a single GPU, regardless of how many are installed in your machine.

[musab.almarri]

even in windows with crossfire enabled ?

[adlihajarat]

Dear,

Autodesk in one of their presentations for Maya 2014 demonstrated this problem.

You can use the following tip as see if it works for you.

This is the article that addressses the problem:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/02/2013-mac-pro-firepro-d700-opengl-is-better-than-we-thought-it-w...

and here is the solution they proposed to solve the problem of GPU memory detection:

you explicitly tell Maya to use your available VRAM with the environment variable MAYA_OGS_GPU_MEMORY_LIMIT=6000 in ~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2014-x64/Maya.env

Hope this will solve the issue you are having with Maya