Maya 2017 renderlayers/collections disappearing

[Anonymous]

hello so im working on a project in maya 2017 ext 2 and i need to set up renderlayers/collections for our scenes. the first time i ran into this was with a scene with 5 characters and i spent the time setting up the new renderlayers to separate each character for our comp artist. i sent them to be rendered and some of the characters came back as black renders. so i reopened the same file and one of the renderlayers set for a character was empty. iv tested this a couple times just setting up 1 render layer and 1 or 2 collections save the file and reopen it and the renderlayer is empty then i attempt to recreate the collection with the same name and i get a iteration of it. so after some time of banging my head against the wall i turned "DAG OBJS" off and looked for the collection layer and its there but no longer connected and sitting idle. this has severely set my production team back and i cant find a answer on the web so i can here.

if anyone has the same issue or a solution please let me know. i never trust new features from maya 90% of the time but its my company's request we do it this way so my hands are tied. also i get errors saying we have legacy renderlayers which iv optimized the scene and it still continues to not save the renderlayers/collections with the scenes.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

When you get a chance, can you please zip and attach the scene file here or via dropbox/google drive or another file sharing program so I can take a look at it?

[mspeer]

Hi!

1. There is no Maya 20127 ext 2, only Maya 2017 update 2.

2. Does it work with a new scene (test with simple objects)?

3. Does it work if you import the scene into a new scene and create layers there?

It looks like this is an older scene ("legacy renderlayers") which may not work correct for some reason.

Maybe updating Maya could help (update 4 or update 5).

[Anonymous]

im on update 4 and yes iv created a new scene and  tryed with simple obj and and it says but with my scenes i have from work they do not stay, is there any way to check and remove these legacy layers wihtout destroying the scenes because this is getting annoying. @sean.heasley not likely this is a work production not a personal project i do not have the authority to do that.

[mspeer]

Hi!

Sorry, without a scene-file i can't help you further (it will take too much time).

You may try to create a new file with the same problem or just delete all meshes from your scene and add a simple sphere to see if the problem is still there, then upload this simplified file.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

If the work is confidential you can send it to me in a private message.

We handle confidential work all the time and the scene would only be seen by myself until we find you a solution!

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Just wanted to check in to see how this was going. If you're still having the issue please feel free to send me the scene file in a private message!

[Anonymous]

Hello, I seem to have the same problem. 

We have a scene which contains references of references. 

I start by setting up the render setup layers, everything works fine until I re-open the scene. 

When I re-open, the layers are still in the scene but one of my two layers loses the display of the collections in the render setup window. If I frame the layer in the hypershade to see the connections, everything looks normal, I can still see the collections properly named and connected. The selectors are still there too.

If I create a new collection at this stage, it appears is the render setup window, in the hypershade I can see it connected properly with the old invisible collections (previous, next, first last, etc...) but if I close the render setup window and open it again, the newly created collection have disappeared too. It makes no sens to me. 

In another scene where we had the same problem, we also got a message warning us that legacy render layer are not compatible with the new ones. Our current scene is in the new render setup mode, but one of the referenced asset might contain a legacy render layer, still it is strange that one of my layer doesn't break wile the other does. 

We have tried to use different names to avoid potential clashes but I can't figure out why, even if all the connections seems correct, the render setup layer and collection is not displayed properly. 

As a final test we finally import everything form reference and deleted the remaining default layers from all the assets and it worked, but it is not a viable solution to us. 

Any ideas on the question would be more than welcom. 

Many thanks!

Jm.B

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

The legacy render layers issue is a known problem and is being worked on by the development team for a future update/release of Maya.

Your main issue with render layers I feel like I've seen before and may have been fixed in an update.

Is your Maya 2017 up to date? Can you possibly try this on 2018?

If not, if you could please post a video of this issue(or send it to me in a private message) I'd be happy to pass this along to development to work on a fix and/or potentially find a workaround for the issue.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your answer, I'll try to do a video or at least a succession of screenshots tomorow to explain my problem better. 

I know legacy render layer is a know limitation, but what kind of problem is it supposed to generate? Could it be the cause of this weird bug? I can't seem to find where could the legacy layer could come from in our scene. 

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

If you open your settings and go to the render tab you can see if you have legacy render layers enabled.

Playing around with that might change it but I;m not sure how work has been done on your file and where/how the legacy render layer is coming from.