Maya Freezes When Saving (2018)

[ktheorin1]

I have been using Maya 2018 for about a month now and it's been working just fine. Out of nowhere, the program starts freezing whenever I hit save or save as. I've reinstalled the program and tried saving in other formats. The only thing that works is when I make a new user account on my Mac and just open to software in that user instead. The issue completely disappears. However, it randomly pops up on those user accounts a day later and I have to do it again.

This has nothing to do with my OS, my applications, or anything as I know its happening on another persons computer as well and they've had to switch over to 2017 to work properly.

Any help in fixing this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[sean.heasley]

Hi @ktheorin1 and welcome to the community!

Sorry to hear your having this issue! I have some initial steps you can try that will hopefully resolve this issue!

1.)Go to Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences
2.)When the preferences window opens on the left scroll down to Files/Projects
3.)Scroll down to File Dialog
4.)Choose dialog style as "OS native"
5.)Save

Please let me know if this helps solve your issue or if you need any more assistance!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[mspeer]

Hi!

Does your user account include non ASCII characters like "?'ä" or whitespace characters?

If yes, this i not recommended and might(/will) lead to problems

[ktheorin1]

My home folder for my computer has no spaces or any odd characters. I've also made new user accounts with differing names and the problem still pops up after a day of use.

[ktheorin1]

Unfortunetly, that setting was already set in my Maya. Turning it off didn't help either.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @ktheorin1

Does this happen on a fresh empty scene as well?

I just tried this on vanilla 2018 on Mac and could not reproduce the issue.

Let me know if you have any steps to reproduce or any other information that may be helpful!

[ktheorin1]

 This does happen on an empty scene. When I make a new user account, it seems to work for a day, but when I log out and log back into the account there's a 50/50 chance the program has encountered the error. Once it encounters the error, it never goes away. Then I just make another user account. It doesn't seem to be a consistent issue across Macbook pros as others in my Maya class use the same laptop I do, but haven't experienced the problem. Uninstalling and reinstalling the software fails to work as well. What's odd is that it doesn't seem to be an error in the software as I can literally use the same installed software on another user account just fine (at least for a bit). It more seems to be related to how the software works between various users as that's the only way I've gotten the software to temporarily work.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @ktheorin1

You said an error occurs that doesn't go away. Could you please post a screenshot of the error and/or a video of Maya freezing on you so I can see exactly what's happening?

If you need a video capturing program, Screencast is a great option that we use here at Autodesk

Let me know if anything changes!

[sean.heasley]

*Duplicate*

[ktheorin1]

Unfortunately, all it does is freeze and I have to force quit the application. There's not really anything to record. Unless there is some log of errors somewhere that I can find (which I don't think there would be if I force quit), then I don't know what additional info I can give.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @ktheorin1

Its a stretch but you could check the Output Window to see if there is anything helpful there when Maya starts to freeze.

Aside from that, is there anything obviously different between your mac and your peers? Do you have any other programs, 3rd party scripts or anything at all that could be causing this issue?

Let me know if anything changes!

[ktheorin1]

How do you access the output window? All I could do is check it after I force quit the application, but I doubt it would still have any info when I restart the program. Nothing can be accessed after I hit save because the program just freezes. Other than that, because it is happening on another computer (one that has no similar programs or plugins installed), I imagine it has nothing to do with these thing.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @ktheorin1

The Output Window is the second white window that appears behind Maya when you launch it. Its possible you can't check it but you might be able to tab to it as Maya freezes and see if anything is displayed there.

[ktheorin1]

At least on a mac with 2018, I don't see any windows outside of Maya opening. Is there a way to manually launch it?

[Stephen.Blair]

---

@ktheorin1 wrote:

At least on a mac with 2018, I don't see any windows outside of Maya opening. Is there a way to manually launch it?

---

On OSX, you have to start Maya from a Terminal. The Output Window is a Windows-only thing.

[ktheorin1]

I opened Maya using terminal, via the open command and then adding the path. However, terminal doesn't display any information relating to the program once its open. Is there something else needed to access the output window specifically?

[Stephen.Blair]

---

@ktheorin1 wrote:

I opened Maya using terminal, via the open command and then adding the path. However, terminal doesn't display any information relating to the program once its open. Is there something else needed to access the output window specifically?

---

There is no Output Window on OSX. The Terminal is the "Output Window"

Anything that would go to the Output Window on Windows will go to the Terminal on OSX.

[mspeer]

Hi!

Are you able to open the File -> Save Scene As Dialog or does Maya crash before?

1. If you can open the Dialog, please try to save at different places of your computer and also please try to save at a connected device like an external hard disk or an USB stick.

2. Remove the folder (where you save Maya Scenes) from online scanning for virus scanner or similar software.

3. Make sure there is enough place to save files (physically and allowed by account settings)

[ktheorin1]

I tried saving to another external drive, but the same issue occurs. My computer also has no virus scanning software installed. And I currently have 150 GB of memory left for saving files.

[ktheorin1]

I figured the terminal window was the output window. I'm just confused because nothing's going to the terminal window when I use maya. Unless that is usually the case, then it seemed like I did something wrong.