topic Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up in Maya Forum

Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Wed, 25 May 2016 08:07:10 GMT

Hey guys,

I am using Maya 2016.5 (Maya 2016 EXT2) for several days and working with it is very annoying. Because the start-up time is many times higher than with Maya 2016 SP4. I think you have implemented the 'Sign In' user control in a very bad way.

When starting Maya 2016.5 the 'Sign In' user control takes all the time for loading (like you can see in the attached screenshot) and freezes the HMI. When the 'Sign In' user control finished loading, then the HMI is updating and you can start to work.

Is there a way to fix this problem?

Thanks,

Kevin

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

h.schoenberger — Thu, 26 May 2016 15:01:04 GMT

I had the same issue and invested a few hours to dig through all mel files, .exe and .dll files.

Note: We do not have any internet connection as many professional studios. Autodesk seems to forget that (e.g. the 3dsmax connect crashes every time I start 3dsmax) and never tests with a blocked internet connection.

What it is:

You are right, it is this new login UI item, the QmayaIPMWidget. It is named the "CLIC IPM (In Product Messaging) Button".

When Maya is started, it starts 5 instances of an external chromium browser.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\CLM\V3\MSVC11\cliccore\acwebbrowser.exe

Maya waits for its start, if it does not start or does not reponse, then Maya closes without any message. This is the first time you can notice some slowdown as it has to load the chromium files and AD plugins (72MB) and waits for a start.

These slowdown affects batch rendering as well (Come on Autodesk, an internet login UI element loaded for batch rendering?)

Then Maya creates the UI and displays the new button. The new feature tries to connect to the internet. This is the UI freeze that you mentioned.

(A dev should splits the UI and network functions into two threads, especially with Qt that this does not happen)

What is it for?
I do not know, I did not tried it.

One menu item is about licensing. We have floating licenses.

Time differences:

Default startup time: 38s shutdown time: 15s

Disabled IPM UI startup time: 14s shutdown time: 5s

24seconds!

I expect a higher difference if you do not have a SDD or if you have not pre-cached the files (e.g. after a Windows restart). I havs a SDD drive and started Maya multiple times to let Windows cache all files. So file load time is not reflected by these numbers. The chromium browser starts in a fraction of a second in my case.

File load should increase the startup times as Maya waits for chromium to be loaded before the UI is displayed.

Disable CLIC IPM UI:

To disable the CLIC IPM UI, you can define the environment variable MAYA_DISABLE_CLIC_IPM=1.

(While you are at it, you might want to define MAYA_DISABLE_CIP=1 as well, I do not know if it is still valid for 2016.5, but the Autodesk Customer Involvement Program (CIP) invokes a TCP connection to Amazon web services (AWS) during Maya shutdown, which can take up to 30s as well depening on your network setup)

Disable acwebbrowser.exe start at all?

Until now, I have not found out where the path to acwebbrowser.exe is defined.

Nor how to disable the start of the application.

If the application is deleted, replaced by a different one or if you try to disable the AD plugin for the browser, Maya fails to start.

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

h.schoenberger — Thu, 26 May 2016 15:23:56 GMT

PS: I noticed an other issue as well.

If I start a maya batch render in any background terminal, then my active application (e.g. this browser where I am writing into) looses the focus and is not the active app any more. I could assume that this is an issue with chromium being started.

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Fri, 27 May 2016 23:13:34 GMT

Had the same problem on an old macpro 2008, maya 2016 strarts normally but 2016.5 is really slow at start, but in my other mac pro 2013 is runnning well

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Mon, 30 May 2016 11:32:25 GMT

Thank you very much! Disabling CLIC IPM UI and CIP is boosting the start-up/shutdown to like it was with Maya 2016. Now the application only needs a few seconds (less then 5 seconds).

You can find the path to acwebbrowser.exe over the Windows Task Manager by using right-click on it. I can find the acwebbrowser.exe at this location: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\Autodesk Desktop App\AcWebBrowser".

Thanks,

Kevin

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

h.schoenberger — Mon, 30 May 2016 11:42:05 GMT

Hi >You can find the path to acwebbrowser.exe over the Windows Task Manager by using right-click on it. I know where it is as I tried to replace it. Which did not work. I am missing the information how Maya knows where the location of the application is defined. I have not found it in any of the Maya application files nor the registry.

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Tue, 31 May 2016 08:02:10 GMT

I found that in mac the problem is caused by AdSSO process but I tried quiting the process but is not fixing enything cause is rebooting every time a quit it.

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

h.schoenberger — Tue, 31 May 2016 09:40:17 GMT

Have you tried setting those environment variables on your OSX machine?

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 09:57:37 GMT

I can´t find the AcWebBrowser process on mac,I just install maya 2016 ext 2 sp 1 but the problem remains, maya hangs on startup and I cant acces login my acount after maya starts cause when I try to login maya hangs again and never show the options

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 21:50:58 GMT

This worked for me too. Maya Mac 2016 Ext 2 was hanging for several minutes at startup, and it seemed related to the "Sign In" button, which, after maya became responsive, continued to create 1 minute hangs when clicked.
I killed the AdSSO process, restarted Maya and it becomes interactive fast.
I can quit and restart with the same good behavior. I'm guessing that if I restart the machine, it will return.

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 12:32:37 GMT

I forget to tell you but I done a clean intallation of my OSX and the problem is now solved, no more lags on startup, I think is a bug with the older version of Maya but not sure

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

tj.galda — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 21:38:53 GMT

Hi gang,

CLIC is our licensing tech and we did have a few speed issues that were fixed. I'm hopeful the bugs we fixed addresses what you're talking about, but please try out the new version and let me know.

It's definitely frustrating when Maya doesn't start quickly and that's something we're working on. The start up process is just one area to look at but it's definitely on our list.

We know that in an ideal world, every moment of your working day would be spent actually making your art, and not dealing with how to make art. How can we improve this?

Please complete our 5 minute survey so that can improve Maya to make it feel and perform faster for you. Your feedback will directly guide our product work.

You can access our survey here: https://autodeskfeedback.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0NY6W3dMthtyAFT

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 14:44:02 GMT

Hi TJ,

Has this new tech made its way into the Linux version of Maya? Or are we still fish out of water when it comes to subscription activation?

Thank!

Re: Maya 2016.5 slow start-up

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 05:28:17 GMT

Thank you! I have been tearing my hair out because of this for over a day now. I added both variables in the Maya.env file like you suggested. The login control doesn't freeze Maya anymore. This saved my life!