Maya 2018 legacy viewport?

[moonpotato]

Hi, 

Ive installed the new maya 2018 and noticed there is no legacy viewport, 

i always use legacy viewport to animate in, as viewport 2.0 is on average 10-15 fps slower than legacy, 

in legacy you can animate in realtime, in viewport 2.0 you have to playblast in order to see what your doing, 

this isn't just a single rig or character, this is across every project I've worked on since viewport 2.0 was released, 

the current proj im working on, 2018 viewport 2.0 is 12fps, maya 2017 legacy viewport is 22.5fps (almost realtime) 

the difference in workflow is night and day. is there a way to enable legacy viewport in 2018 ? if not, then i guess that 

means 2017 is the end of the line for us animators on tight deadlines ???... BUMMER!!!! 

animating at half the frame rate on a tight deadline is like doing look dev at a quarter res- you just can't see what your doing... 

[laurence.cymet]

Question? Are your normal maps set to raw colorSpace in the file node? 

[Anonymous]

Thanks ccorsica, that fixes it. Peace restored.

[stumanchu]

Thanks for the response to this thread ccorsica!  I tried making the file and posting to the path you described and

nothing works.  I can find a number of redundant and different places to put the file (mac), but I'm having no luck with

getting it placed in the correct location.  My primary interest in the legacy viewport is to be able to use the Viewcube,

a fundamental modelling tool for squaring out scenes, or getting back to an exact position for primary framing. 

One reason they dropped the View Cube in 2.0, I have read, states that users just didn't really care about the View Cube and were annoyed that they had to

turn it off in the general preferences.  I would be ecstatic if I could just turn it on from the preferences, just like it was in

the legacy viewport!  It is a tremendously important navigational device for modelling and why they just randomly deleted

it is just odd.  Unless it has something to do with compatibility with Viewport 2.0 code and Arnold?....I don't know, and I don't have time to figure

that one out.  But I have time to "whine" about it a little....LOL!

Anyway, Autodesk (for the common man) is asking way to much to have "general" users (students, newbies, casual users, etc.) have to go through

the gyrations of altering environment variables to access a fundamental tool that should be a simple option to check in the preference pane. And, it

should be brought back ASAP!!!....(I'm stamping my feet now like a little child!).

[Anonymous]

For Mac it may be a little different.

1. Create a text file named Maya.env.
2. Write the following in it: MAYA_ENABLE_LEGACY_VIEWPORT = 1
3. Save it in: /Users/username/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2018

4. Open Maya

A few notes for Mac users:

Maya.env is a text file that you can create and edit with any text editor. If you use TextEdit or a word processing program, be sure to save it as an ASCII (basic) text file, not RTF. (In the TextEdit Preferences window, set New Document Format to Plain text, and under Saving, turn off the option Append “.txt” to plain text files.) Unicode (UTF-8) worked for me

In order to view the Library folder in your user profile, you will need to enable view hidden folders on your Mac. Here is a tutorial for that:

https://ianlunn.co.uk/articles/quickly-showhide-hidden-files-mac-os-x-mavericks/

If it still doesnt work, try opening Maya using the terminal instead. To do this, open the terminal and type:

open -a /Applications/Autodesk/maya2018/Maya.app

A similar feature to the viewcube is available on your panel menu. Under View> View Along Axis.

[stumanchu]

Thanks for the info ccorsica!  I was using the information in your previous post to moonpotato that said:

"

For those that want to skip the reading...

1. Create a text file named: Maya.env

2. Write the following in it: MAYA_ENABLE_LEGACY_VIEWPORT = 1

3. Save it in: \Users\username\Documents\maya\version

4. Open up Maya

However, #3 is actually misleading because it should be, as you stated in your response to my post:

3. Save it in: /Users/username/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2018

I was confused with the "Documents" folder reference.  Anyway, Yes, that would technically fix the issue, but I

am using a Beta Standalone Version and this environment variable will no longer work.  Ultimately it's probably

because the legacy viewport is on it's way out and they probably don't want to maintain 2 viewport options

because they are putiing a lot of work into developing 2.0.

That being said, I thank you for responding, you are kind and provided the exact info I would have needed.

As for the View > View along Axis option, it's about 10 steps back from the power of the View Cube and I will

continue to harp to anyone I can get to on the Test Forums to get this feature back.  So, stay tuned, I will try

and update you when I have succeeded!!

Thanks again for your response!

[Anonymous]

Viewport 2.0 is awful.  It is so slow. Our production pipeline is suffering with it.  Even after implementing everything in https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/Maya-Ren...

I will suggest we start the next project in an older maya that has the legacy viewport. I don't know how Autodesk missed this. 

[laurence.cymet]

Hello, 

Can you give us some examples of where Viewport 2.0 is slow for you in Maya 2018? We are actively addressing any defects and want to catch everything. 

As mentioned earlier in the post you can enable the legacy viewport in Maya 2018 if you are really stuck, but it's important that we catch any issues we missed in VP2 - so if you can share details on your scene data and workflows that you feel are slow we would greatly appreciate it. 

Thanks,

Laurence Cymet

[moonpotato]

Hi Laurence, 

one thing I've noticed that is consistently annoying to work with, is constraints failing to update properly.

move a controller on a character rig and the constrained joints etc don't follow, set a key and they snap into place, change frame and they snap into place, usually a restart fixes the issue, for a while. 

it seems to happen really badly on some rigs and not at all on others, though i can't see a pattern..

the solution always used to be, switch over to legacy viewport which never seems to have the problem

but now it's a case of constantly restarting maya (or simply editing the env to get the legacy back) 

2018 seems to suffer from this problem a lot.

[mspeer]

Hi!

Please try switching Evaluation Mode ("Parallel" vs "DG") in Preferences.

[gpmail1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-TFcBPvB7I

Now tell me we don't NEED it anymore.

[MannaTheBerserk]

Viewport 2.0 is not production proof indeed.

Its feedback is not reliable and still has limitations to what you can do, compared to the legacy viewport.

One clear advantage is its speed though.

[laurence.cymet]

Hi gpmail1 - texture reference objects should be supported in Viewport 2.0 as of Maya 2018 - is this not working for you? 

[laurence.cymet]

As mspeer suggested, this may be an issue with rig evaluation, and setting prefs\settings\animation\evaluation-mode to DG may help.  Please let us know if this is the case as we'd like to sort out what's happening and make sure it doesn't happen again. 

Thank you. 

[laurence.cymet]

Viewport 2.0 is colour managed, so you need to ensure your normal map texture files have their colorSpace attribute set to raw for them to correctly display in the viewport.  You can easily set up a rule in the colour management section of the prefs to automatically do this if all of your normal maps follow some kind of naming convention (e.g. *nrm*) - detailed here: http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2017/ENU/?guid=GUID-631C665F-3092-4B2B-90B7-2A94158870C9

Let me know if this isn't realistic for you - maybe we can find a more automated solution in the future. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks very much.