Ctrl+V reads a copy of the scene into itself

[Anonymous]

Pressing CTRL+V in the outliner, with nothing previously copied or selected, reads the contents of the entire scene, if it has been previously saved, back into self.

Can someone tell me if this is a known bug?

Joey

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

I just checked this across Maya 2017 and 2018 and while I couldn't reproduce your problem I noticed that Maya would save what ever I had copied across multiple versions of Maya.

For example, if I copy pasted a cube in Maya 2017 then closed the scene and opened Maya 2018 and hit paste the same cube from 2017 would appear.

As for your issue could you post a screenshot or video of the problem so I can get a better idea of potential fixes?

[Anonymous]

To replicate is simple.

In either Maya 2016, 2017, or 2018:

Create a new scene.

Add several primitives and move around randomly.

Save the scene.

Deselect everything.

Open Outliner and press Ctrl+V

You should get a copy of the saved scene in a new group and inside that group will be all the objects brought forward from the saved scene and will have "pasted__" appended to the beginning of their name.

Also. Do not execute a copy (Ctrl+C) at any point in this process. The copy will then become the active item to be pasted. This only occurs in the Outliner, so you cursor must be in the outliner. And the scene must have been saved at least once prior to the CTRL+V.

Joey

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for the detailed post! I followed all your steps to reproduce and for me it would paste only one object, not the entire scene.

I made a video as well showing my scene and it looks like your issue is a bit different so you may want to try deleting your settings/preferences. Often times small differences like this can be caused from an issue with a change to the settings/preferences

Let me know if this helps or if you need any more information!

[Anonymous]

So the behavior you describe is what I am seeing in Maya 2018. Its apparently copying the last item created in that scene.

However, now I am getting errors from the cutCopyPaste.mel script on line 75 in both Maya 2016 and Maya 2017. 

Upon interrogating the 2017 script, this is what I find:

68: // import scene
69: string $newTransforms[] = `file -force
70:  -import
71:  -renameAll true
72:  -renamingPrefix "pasted_"
73:  -groupReference
74:  -returnNewNodes
75:  $filePath`;

So apparently dependent upon certain conditions are occurring, it clearly re-IMPORTS the active scene with certain caveats. This does not look like an issue with settings/preferences. For example, on line 23 it tells us explicitly that it is going to cache the scene name for potential copy/paste

 //Get the latest maya clipboard scene, whether ascii or binary

There is no circumstance for where this kind of behavior, copying and pasting an active scene into itself from the Outliner, is warranted. 

This occurred because I imported a CityEngine FBX export with over 40000+ geometry objects into Maya. I was processing and cleaning up the scene, correcting materials, and renaming objects when I inadvertently hit CTRL+V in the outliner without an object name initiated for a rename. It took the command as a scene copy/paste.That scene then began to be reimported on top of itself. All 40000+ objects. After hours of waiting for it to finish the reimport, I am now waiting for all of those objects to be deleted.

I imported the original scene yesterday. I am still waiting for the 40000+ duplicate objects to be deleted so I can salvage my scene. The feature is not listed or accessible for editing via the Hotkey editor in association with the Outliner.

This script either needs to be fixed or scene copy/paste removed.

Joey

[Anonymous]

So I can provide more detail on why it is behaving the way it is.

Apparently Maya uses a file called 'maya_sceneClipBoard.mb' to store the paste data under certain conditions. If it does, this will allow it to copy the data across independent Maya sessions as you previously described. It will also cause errors if the clipboard file is saved from a different version than the session of Maya attempting to read (paste) it.

If the file is created it will be stored here:

'C:/Users/USER_NAME/AppData/Local/Temp/1/maya_sceneClipBoard.mb'

Now delete that file and try the steps I provided earlier again.

This is what I got:

As you will see it now replicated everything that was in the file including any hierarchies.

This needs to be fixed and should not be permitted without reasonable checks upon the process.

The process here is illogical. It is a assuming a paste action with no previous copy action ever having been done. Aside from the fact that such a procedure is bad form, its not clearly documented that I can tell and is highly conditional. Copy something and it will paste what was copied, don't copy something it will paste the current scene upon itself, copy something from one session to another. And its not clear in any way how you manage to get the clipboard scene created, versus assume that a current scene will just be duplicated/re-imported upon itself.

This needs to be fixed.

Joey 

[mspeer]

Hi!

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Although a new scene does produce an error when using CTRL + V (without prior CTRL + C ), a saved or opened scene does not and it comes to the problem you described. It seems that Open and Save (, but not Import,) fill up the Clipboard for Copy/Paste with the opened/saved scene.

This should be reported as a bug to Autodesk:
Help -> Speak Back -> Report a Problem

[gaudres · Accepted solution]

Hi

I am Sophie and I am the Maya User Interface QA at Autodesk.
I can reproduce the problem on my side
I opened a defect for that problem in our database and I brought it to our development team

Sophie

[seandunderdaleBAKA7]

Hi, is this problem fixed?

I still occasionally have issue where I try to copy-paste a name into something in the outliner and my mouse hasn't properly double clicked and entered renaming, and then when I try to paste the name I want to name / amend it imports my entire scene back into itself.

Fortunately I never do anything without auto-save turned on so I can roll back 15 mins, but its very annoying when it happens. There are so many ways to combine data in maya from other scenes, I don't see why CTRL-V should do something so drastic to the scene when its used all the time for naming.

[mspeer]

Hi!

The only when to prevent this from happening accidentally would be to add a confirmation window for scene data like "Do you really want to paste scene-data?"

[seandunderdaleBAKA7]

I found that I could un-assign Ctrl-V from "paste scene data" via the hotkey editor. Hopefully that will be the end of that!

[Anonymous]

I clearly remember someone screaming about this many many years ago. It was 2007 if I am not mistaken. This "artist" was feverishly working on a project with a tight deadline, he hits Ctrl-V and pastes stuff from a personal project from weeks before in his precious client scene. Maya crashed of course and lots of time was wasted.

Every time Maya forces its stupid keyboard shortcuts on people all hell breaks loose. And I love it when Maya prevents users from overriding the "new" "default" hot keys with old user hotkeys. They revert to the defaults every time you restart Maya. This happens every so many versions of Maya. Just to keep things nice and fresh and lively.

Maya is a fat metastatic cancer. You need a custom script to fix every button, feature, and option. Different fix for different versions too. Don't know how freelancers deal with this garbage when they have to work in different versions every few weeks or days.

No decent developer would fall as low as to work for Autodesk Maya. You must really suck to end up working as a Maya developer otherwise you would work ANYWHERE else.

>I found that I could un-assign Ctrl-V from "paste scene data" via the hotkey editor. Hopefully that will be the end of that!

Uninstalling works like a charm.

[seandunderdaleBAKA7]

I actually real life lolled. *Thumbs up*

[Discussion_Admin]

Please remember these are professional forums and as such deserve a professional decorum when participating.

Thanks
Discussion_Admin

[sake75]

I also had the same issue for a long time.

Just notice that you need to deselect first then select the object before export.

Here is the step.

1. Duplicate the object you want.

2. Unselect or clear selection.

3. Select the object you like to export.

4. Do Export selection.

/////////Run this mel script to export to the pass you want or follow the step above/////////////////

string $sel[] = `ls -sl`;
duplicate $sel;
parent -w;
rename clipboard;
select -cl;
select -r clipboard;
file -force -options "v=0;" -typ "mayaBinary" -es "c:/YOURWORKING_PASS/clipboard.mb";
delete;

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Cheers.

[bdewalleDD7LQ]

Hi,

This bug still exists in Maya 2019.

A fix is needed for this, as it causes a lot of our users to crash their sessions of maya.

[Seb_ABF]

This is such an annoying, and a stupid, thing for Maya to do when you hit CTRL+V. I don't get why they'd code Maya to paste an entire copy of the scene into itself, I always end up doing it accidentally when I'm renaming things... Like if I copy a name from one object to another or to the Rename box in the interface, if I haven't clicked in the box perfectly I end up with 1000s of extra nodes that I don't need.

There is a bit of a fix for it, search for pasted* in the Outliner with all objects (not just DAG nodes) showing, then select all those and hit delete. I found that I needed to optimise rendering nodes too to get rid of the doubled-up shaders too, though.

[ataylor.animator]

Hi,

I'm a previs artist who's been working in the VFX industry almost exclusively in Maya for six years. This has been a constant and infuriating problem for me as far back as Maya 2012. I often copy and paste keys in the graph editor. Simply having my cursor in viewport instead of hovering in the graph editor will cause this issue. Instead of pasting the keys I just copied, my scene, which can be very heavy with 20+ references, gets entirely copy pasted into itself. I've had to adapt my workflow to double check that my cursor sits in the graph editor before ever hitting ctrl+V, but still, I occasionally forget. It often will cause a crash and I have to go back through my scene and isolate all imported asset copies and delete them. I've been hoping for years this was a bug that would get solved but here we are. Hopefully my experience can contribute to some progress on solving this weirdly unintuitive interface quirk. Thanks!

[didrik_lepisto]

Hey, just chiming in here to flag that this is still a problem, and I've yet to this day found a solution.

What message 11 said sounded like a it would've worked, but it appears this command does not exist in the hotkey editor. Maybe it was removed? Well it still happens. I'm on Maya 2023.

Is this ever gonna be fixed or at least given the option to be blocked? Come on Autodesk...

[depuiseaufelix]

this is the hotkey you need to remove