Track View Curve Editor looks like Dope Sheet

[mcalhoun889]

The only similar problem/solution I've seen was posted in 2006 and isn't much help now, so I'm posting this in hopes of a new solution.
My co-worker is opening the curve editor and it is displaying something that looks like the dope sheet.
Switching between dope sheet and curve editor in the "Editor" drop-down changes the appearance slightly, but no curves appear.
The top and bottom row menu buttons don't even resemble the curve editor.
So far we've tried opening the curve editor from all the different short cuts (quads, 'graph editor' in toolbar, shortcut in toolbar)
Then we tried deleting the saved track views, and opening a new track view.
Finally we tried reseting the CUI.
The solution from 2006 stated that having a shortcut for "Edit Keys" and "Edit Function" solved the problem, but there appears to be no
"Edit Function" command anymore anyway. This strange problem isn't happening on my machine, and we'd like to not reinstall Max


 

[ads_royje]

Hi mcalhoun889,

Is this happening on a saved scene(s) only or is that also happening on new scenes ?

Track views are saved with scenes, so this may be where the set up is located / saved.

If it happens on a new scene, there may have been a corruption in the trackview.ini file.

In the resolution you seen, was there question of the trackview.ini file ?

If not, could you try :

. Close any max running instances.

. in Windows explorer, go to :

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2017 - 64bit\ENU\en-US\plugcfg\

and delete or move out the "trackview.ini" file.

It will be recreated on start up from the one in Program Files.

. Start Max

. Try to open Trackview - curve Editor in an empty scene.

Please note that the path ENU\en-US refers to use Max in ENglish Us, if you use a localized version, the path may be different.

Let me know it that solves the issue or not.

[mcalhoun889]

It was happening in empty scenes too, so my co-worker had tried that and noted no change, 
so I went and deleted every instance of the trackview.ini from his machine I could find with a search (including every language) and did a reboot just in case. And now an even stranger thing is occurring, the curve editor still looks like the dope sheet, and all the toolbar buttons are now floating, ALL of them.

Our next guess is to reinstall max completely.

[ads_royje]

That is very odd 😞

The ini files found in Max folders in Program Files are the 'installed' ones, that are copied over in appdata per users. This is where customized preferences are saved per users.

It may be a good thing to try to uninstall and re-install.

Before re-starting Max from a fresh install, delete all files found in 

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2017 - 64bit\

or better, remove 2017 - 64bit folder. This can be ziped and moved for later re-use if you want to retrieve some customization.

If you still have the travkview.ini file, I would like to compare it to the default one, if I can see something in the file that may cause the issue.

Thanks! 🙂

[billnuttall]

Hi,

I was just having this same problem and just googled to find an answer without much success until I read your original query which mentioned the 2006 'edit keys', 'edit function' shortcut fix which are now unavailable in 2017. Anyway, it lead me down the right path so thank you.

The solution I found was to right click on the title bar of the curve editor and on the dropdown under 'load layout' there are the options to switch back from the function curve layout.

Hope you didn't end up reinstalling max!

A

[triffski]

Hi,

I've been repeatedly having this problem for a while now in 2017 and 2011, currently every few hours with new and old scenes. My Track View regularly opens up with no toolbars and just the white menu bar, variously selecting layouts either does nothing/shows no toolbars, sometimes if I detach and close the Track View then open it, it works again for a while and quite often all of the layouts and toolbars disappear from the right-click list altogether, so I can't even manually reload whichever ones I want. Deleting Trackview.ini gives me zero layouts ,14 empty toolbars and no buttons at all (see attached), and re-configuring my Track View three times an hour from the default got boring very quickly...

This got me digging. The forums told me that a default TrackView.ini is installed into plugcfg per-user, but not before I'd reinstalled Max. So I made a backup of the whole clean ENU folder (this all relates to en-us btw, names might vary) and have since had some success deleting and copying my ENU backup over again. This is not a great idea as it makes installing/maintaining scripts a pain, wipes any more recent customisation and can break plugins. It is still a good idea to regularly back up the folder tho (C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2017 - 64bit\ENU).

I went off hunting. It seemed that everything is stored in Trackview.ini, including toolbars. So I made a backup and worked out the names of layouts/toolbars are in this format:

[layoutname -- toolbar name]

...so for example:

Trackview 1=default

...will have related entries later in the .ini in sections like this:

[default -- Ranges : Dope Sheet]

...followed by a load of parameters for 'Dope Sheet'. I made a layout in Max for myself, which defaulted to #7 in the .ini, then backed up this new .ini somewhere safe before Max could corrupt it, and wrote a batch file to overwrite Max's version under 'ENU\en-us\plugcfg' whenever it gets in a twist because it happens so often. Clunky, but it seems to work.

The next part will work whether you've customised your .ini or using the default.

Put the following into a .bat file, kill Max, execute it and restart Max, you should have your defaults (or custom layout) back:

@Anonymousoff
echo Max is in a pickle. Reverting TrackView to defaults...
copy /y "C:\<wherever your backup file lives>\Trackview.ini" "C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2017 - 64bit\ENU\en-US\plugcfg\"
timeout 3

exit

Remember to substitute <user name> and <wherever your backup file lives>, your Max version and ENU\en-us for whatever your localisation is, I expect as long as you use a like-for-like Trackview.ini as the basis (I was briefly in German - schließen??!) then the same method should work.

Hope this helps someone, it certainly took me a lot less time to type than I've spent rooting around in config files recently. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work on corrupted layouts saved with Max files even when all saved Track Views have been deleted, so I'm in the process of merging into a new scene and hoping that works. Jeesh...

Cheers,

triff

[mcalhoun889]

I've tried this and it does not work

[mcalhoun889]

Sorry, I've tried to follow what you're describing and I just don't understand. I'm not familiar with the commands written within an .ini file,

so when you show these hypothetical entries, I don't know what you're looking at. But this same problem is happening to my machine and its destroying my work flow. Any help would be welcomed.

[triffski]

It worked for me once, the second time it didn't and I had to trash the ENU folder, replace with a fresh one (as I described above, using a batch file because it was happening so often to me) and rebuild all my toolbars.... Bit of a nightmare yeah.

I did find it's very easy to completely screw up your Track View and the only way I could get it to work was by very carefully copying and pruning entries form the .ini - so absolutely your mileage will probably vary. Maybe I just got lucky.

Really you'd think Autodesk would just fix the core app so this doesn't happen, but I'm becoming more and more convinced they just want to push everyone over to Maya.

Anyway, I feel your pain, I'm sorry that didn't help and best of luck. It's infuriating, right? I won't even go into my current issues animating in Max...

[Anonymous]

I know this thread is a bit old but I found a way around it. It's not the solution but can be used so that nobody has to re-install 3ds max.

Go to Customize User Interface -> Menus and chose in the drop down Graph Editors.
Then search in the Action bar for Curve Editor (Classic) (Open) and drag it to the right.
This should add a new Curve editor option under Graph Editors in the interface

[renatokg3d]

This issue is still going on with the 2024 version.
I am deleting the 3dsmax.ini and the trackview.ini on a daily basis!!!
What is going on, Autodesk? So hard to fix  such an old issue like that?