Maya 2016 Maya software wont render textures

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys, we have yet another issue with our Maya 2016, we have created a very complicated animation and for some reason Maya has decided that it no longer wants to render anything with textures! The only exception to this is the hardware renderer will render the basic shades for the varied textures but software renderer just won't render it... Are we missing something?... We are running on Mac, perhaps this is where we have been going wrong all along?... 😉

Be very grateful for some help on this please.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Are you seeing any errors when you use Maya software?

Also, is your GPU up to date?

Steps to update your drivers can be found here!

Finally, have you tried a different renderer like Arnold or Mental Ray to see if the same issue occurs?

Let me know if anything changes!

[Anonymous]

Yes, no textures when rendering with Maya software renderer (even though when you click an object it states that there is a texture signed to it).

We are running Mac, so no, no GPU updates for it, they aren't available.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Right my bad I always forget macs are different with drivers 

What version of Mac os are you running?

Also, do the textures appear fine in the viewport and if you have shaded textures on (7 key)?

[Anonymous]

No, the textures don't appear in viewport in 6 or 7 also don't appear when rendering unless hardware.

We are running OS10.12

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Your OS version isn't officially supported for Maya 2016 so that may be causing the issue.

Not being able to see the textures in the viewport is also unusual and makes me think its a gpu/settings issue.

Have you tried deleting your settings/preferences? If not please do so.

Also, has this worked in the past or has this always been an issue?

[mspeer]

Hi!

If you can't see the textures anywhere i guess they can't be accessed by Maya / user.

Please check paths with File Path Editor:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2016/ENU/?guid=GUID-33E848B6-51E9-4D92-B44F-BE9D169D70C1

And make sure you have the required rights for access.

As a test you may move some textures to a different folder and re-connect them.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, we have thrown away prefs etc.

To be honest we get the feeling that Autodesk have never really made Maya work properly with Mac. We have had SO MANY issues with our software and since you seem to always point to our current issue being the fault of the Mac by stating that "you don't officially support Maya 2016" I must assume the software still isn't really compatible. Not too great when you consider your competition DOES fully support Macs and that your software cost our studio nearly THREE THOUSAND POUNDS!!! 

I also find it a little unreasonable that it wasn't at all clear to us that the software wasn't really compatible at the time of purchase. Regardless, we will look at the potential "solutions"..

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Mac is compatible with Maya and works fine, however we can't guarantee newer versions of Mac operating systems working well with older versions of Maya. This is why we have our system requirements available at all times.

That said, @mspeer makes a good suggestion and I'd recommend trying his steps especially moving the textures to a different location/folder and seeing if they can load in.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

I'm just checking in to see if you need more help with this. Did the suggestion that @mspeer provided work for you?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[Anonymous]

We haven't had a chance to check it yet but I also felt it worth mentioning that we were able to assign a new texture to a part of our object that we were animating however it applied the texture to everything! Still looking into this...

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

If it applied the texture to everything, its possible you used the texture file on the base lambert 1 material in Maya. This material is the basic shader applied to everything like when you create a cube for example.

If that is the case, please try creating a new material and then assign the texture to it.

[Anonymous]

NO, we had layered textures applied to some objects and a whole variety of other textures. Once again, Maya is going to cost us a LOT more time (and money) to complete our job!

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

So what's happening now with the textures?

Are they still not appearing properly?

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Just wanted to check in to see how things were going. Are you still having this issue?

If your issue is resolved, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[Anonymous]

No, it still doesn't work.

To be honest, our Maya has so many problems we would take FOREVER to create a model properly if we were to post overtime we had a crash or freeze. This software is a joke for Mac! Let me guess, we "should throw away preferences" or it's "something to do with our machines". Yeah, OK! 😉

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

If you could provide more information on what's happening I could help you further. You say "it still doesn't work" but I need to know what's happening.

Are the new textures still being assigned to multiple models?

Have you checked all your shaders to make sure the same shader isn't on multiple models etc?

[Anonymous]

Textures WERE assigned but, Maya being Maya (on Mac) they no longer load or display in viewport properly. (Please see above).

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Right ok. Since we can't tweak GPU settings for Mac, you can try changing your rendering engine:

If that doesn't work, then the issue may be related to your Mac OS version. Like I mentioned above, your OS version isn't compatible with 2016 but it is however compatible with newer versions of Maya like 2018 etc.

[Anonymous]

Ok, so why has this suddenly started happening?.... Didn't do it before!

So what you're really saying is, pay Autodesk a shed load of money MORE (for the "correct" version) and suddenly everything will work properly again!! Are you serious?! This SHOULD be working now. This software is trash IMO. It's clearly yet another bug!