Maya 2018: Undo pauses Maya for 20 seconds.

[Anonymous]

Hi there! Having an interesting issue with Maya. When pressing ctrl-z for undo, Maya will pause (get the hourglass cursor) for 20 seconds. Every time. No matter how little the change.

System:
Windows 10 Pro
24 GB DDR5
GTX 1050 ti

Symptoms:
I've watched the PC performance when undoing, and Maya's CPU use rises significantly (26%+) after pressing ctrl-z, and then comes down when the "pause" is over.

Things I've done, based on research:
1. Restarted Maya. My IT powers have failed me.
2. Cleared out the %TEMP% directory. It wasn't that full, but I tried it anyway. No luck.
3. Disabled MASH and BIFROST plugins. Still having the problem.

Any other suggestions? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for posting! 🙂 Is this happening with all scenes (even brand new ones) or is it just tied to a specific scene?

If you havent done so already, I would recommend Resetting your Preferences folder and see if that helps. Sometimes the preferences can get corrupted and mess with background processes in Maya. 

After that, I have a couple more suggestions:

1. Make sure that your Graphics Card Drivers are up to date: NVidia Driver Finder Tool
2. Make sure your OS meets the requirements for Maya
   • Certified Hardware for Maya
3. Make sure your Maya is up to date. Updates are separate installs that you can download from your Autodesk Account. For Maya 2018, the latest update is 2018.3: Where to find Updates for Maya
4. If you have any non-standard peripherals (wacom table, 3d mouse, etc.) try unplugging these and see if the behavior continues

Let me know if the problem persists after trying those steps 🙂 I'd be happy to keep working with you until we figure it out!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Thanks, @Anonymous, I appreciate the response. It helped lead me to the answer.

I asked the modeler having the trouble if it was a problem in other files (usually my first question, thanks for the reminder). We loaded another one that he hadn't worked on, and it was fine. So we exported the models from the file that was having issues, and saved it. This time he noticed that the file was much larger than it should have been.

That reminded us of a previous problem we'd had. In Maya, when you save a file, there is an option to "Copy jiggle files" which makes the files much, much larger, and seems to have been causing the pausing when undoing. Or at least that's my best guess. Now that the option has been switched to "never", the problem has gone away.

Solution:
When selecting "Save as" in Maya turn the option "Copy jiggle files" to "Never". All fixed!