Maya 2014 not opening/saving scenes

[fredcoast13]

Hello !

So here's the problem :

I just installed Maya 2014 on my Windows 7 computer and I wanted to test if everything was working smoothly before uninstalling Maya 2013. So I open Maya 2014 and try to load a scene of my last project done on Maya 2013. Here's what it says :

# Error: UnicodeEncodeError: ascii

Maya 2013 used to do the same. My workaround was to do a Set Project, and when I attempt a second time to open my scene, it works. But now that doesn't seem to work anymore : when I try to do the Set Project, it returns the same error...

I tried to erase the preferences (imported from Maya 2013) but then that error happens when I try to open/save file :

# Error: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2014/scripts/fromNativePath.mel line 90: (unicode error) 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe9' in position 11: ordinal not in range(128)

What can I do about that ? I should also mention that there are some non-ascii characters in my path, but that wasn't much of a problem before. Is 2014 more strict about that ? I tried to open a file in a completely ascii path, but it didn't work either...

And I also have Maya 2013 installed for now... can it be the problem ? I don't really want to uninstall it before 2014 is fine and running correctly.

Thanks for your answers !

Frederic M.

[Dindea]

I'm having pretty much the same problem (also had the same with 2013 and setting project).
So far haven't been able to find a fix for it.

Though I am able to save previously created files (but not Save As).
So for now i emptied an old file and copied it.
Now everytime i want to start something new i copy it again and change the name.

it's far from ideal and very frustrating, hoping to find a fix soon 😞

[sorb78]

Yes Maya 2014 seems to be more sensitive about non-ascii characters. The character in the error message is this one:

http://www.charbase.com/00e9-unicode-latin-small-letter-e-with-acute

Remove that from the file name and the path.

[fredcoast13]

Thanks Sorb for your help. I expected the problem to be something like that.

The problem is, my main account on my computer has two "é" characters in it, and I don't think I can change it without formatting the computer (which I don't want to do).

Also, it gives me the error even if I try to save in ascii paths (like C:/Temp). I will try to save using another account (one with only ascii characters) to see if the error still appears.

[Steve_Curley]

Microsoft link:- Change username on Win7.

[fredcoast13]

Thanks for the link Steve_Curley, but I had already tried that a while ago and it only changed the display of the username (on the login screen and the display messages). The account folder itself wasn't renamed and so the path, which is the real problem here.

But I finally found a workaround to fix my problem. I added the environment variable MAYA_APP_DIR (which changes the default location of the maya folder, usually set in the user's My Documents) and set it to a path without non-ascii characters (in my case C:\Users\Frederic\maya).

It would seem that Maya wasn't able to properly access the maya folder because of non-ascii characters in the path and so wasn't able to save or open anything.

But what's funny about all that is now I can open and save scenes in non-ascii paths, as long as the project itself is set in an ascii path.

Well, thanks to you all, problem solved.

[sorb78]

Great, that's a clever workaround. It is possible to change your account folder but I'm not sure it's safe according to this:

Microsoft link:- Change default Documents location

[matous.stieber]

Hi, I downloaded the latest version of Maya 2014 but when I saved the Maya document it reported me an error # Error: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2014/scripts/others/fromNativePath.mel line 90: (unicode error) 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u0161' in position 14: ordinal not in range(128) # I found out, that the reason could be the unsuitable character "š" in my Windows user name "Matouš". If I saved the Maya document in another folder without any of the unsuitable characters, it reported me an error # Error: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2014/scripts/others/fromNativePath.mel line 90: UnicodeEncodeError: file C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\bin\python27.zip\os.py line 420: ascii # I don´t know where could be the problem.

[thenimblesloth]

I am having the same issue:

# Error: file: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2014/scripts/others/fromNativePath.mel line 90: UnicodeEncodeError: file C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\bin\python27.zip\os.py line 420: ascii

Changed my user name slöth to sloth same thing.

Made a new project folder outside 'mydocuments' onto C:\ same thing.

However, created a new account and bam worked like a champ!

picky program.

[ronen1311]

Thx frederic you hallp me a lot