MEL renaming issues.

[howald]

Morning Everyone.  

I've been using the same rigging MEL scripts for several years now (since 2020).  They have worked flawlessly until Maya 2025.  Everything seems to work well until I get to the fingers.  Maya doesn't seem to be able to handle duplicating and renaming objects consistently, not renaming the children of some of the hierarchies. This needs to stay scripted, so manual re-naming is not an option.  Has anyone come across this in version 2025, and if so, are there any solutions or updated MEL commands I'm unfamiliar with?  

Thanks in advance. 

Kris.

[mcw0]

Without specifics, it's impossible to comment.  As for the stableness of MEL scripts, I've been on Maya since it's inception.  I have scripts over 20 years old that I still use.  With the only hiccup of me being a newbie to scripting in those early scripts and using $tmp, I've had no issues.  I haven't tried 2025, or 2024.  But so far, everything I've ever scripted is still working perfectly fine.

This can't be said for Python scripts.  With the exception of the $tmp event, I don't have to do anything to my MEL scripts...ever.

[howald]

Yep, I've been using Maya since Beta 3 (98?), and Mel has worked all these years...until now.  I don't doubt you've had great success with MEL, and I'm not asking anyone to review my code (as it works).  My question goes out to anyone with current knowledge of Maya "2025" and who has tried any mass renaming through MEL with "rename" or "searchReplaceNames."  I think there is a bug that is not correctly renaming hierarchies, as it misses nodes.  I've attached a screen capture of the result. 

If I run the same code in any version before 2025 (I ran it in 2024 in the image attached), it will work flawlessly. If anyone has experienced this, could you kindly share your workaround?  I will resort to brute force for now.....since I've tried pretty much everything.  

Thanks for the reply. 

[mcw0]

HEY!!!  It's great to "meet" another old-timer!!!  LOL!!!

Might I suggest printing the list that is fed into your rename loop.  I suspect the order is different.  Compare the printout from 2024 and 2025.

[howald · Accepted solution]

Old timers unite:) 

Any auto-renaming seems to cause issues.  I've tried loops, functions, etc. 

I did get it to work, and it only took about 10 minutes.  I brute-forced it by rebuilding the nodes I needed for each finger. So all is good. That said, I'm pretty sure there is some bug.  I've chatted with some of my colleagues (who have much larger brains for scripting than I do), and they seem to have the same issues.  I'm not sure how Autodesk overlooked this, as renaming and search and replace names are basic commands.  

Thanks again for the suggestions.