nParticle Set Initial State not working (Maya 2017 Update 3)

[Anonymous]

One more day trying to get NOTHING done in Maya...

Apparently you can't reliably Set Initial State for nParticles with lifespan set to anything but Infinite in this version of Maya. I wasted my precious time today trying to figure out why this is not working. SET INITIAL STATE does not work. Or maybe it does if you save the scene and reopen it. Or maybe if you go back a frame before the START FRAME.

Either way it is ONE MORE BROKEN thing in Maya. Essentially nothing works anymore. Every click requires a workaround.

The company paying me to do this project is wondering why it's taking me so long to do what I am assigned. I could get into a discussion with them that they are using Maya 2017 Update 3, and that there is an Update 4 that MAYBE fixes this problem that wasted some of my time just now. But it's pointless having this discussion. Because the next version of Maya may not have fixed this. Or probably has introduced 50 other new bugs.

Why does this software suck so bad?

Is it the management?

Is it the developers?

It must be somebody's fault.

I don't care to know any more workarounds in this software. This software has failed a long time ago. And it's just getting worse and worse even though it's hard to imagine HOW it could still be getting worse. I am just curious as to who is responsible for its condition. Does Autodesk know how bad it is? Does it wonder why? Does it care? My guess is no.

I can't offer any information on this or any other of the thousand of bugs in Maya. That would be like offering my time to Autodesk for free. That's never going to happen. I use this program to make a living. Or at least I used to. Now I am just wasting time wondering what works, if anything.

And here is some good news. Create Sphere still works. WOW!

Other fun things that happen every day instead of getting anything done in Maya:

Every morning when I open my scene the first time Maya crashes. The second time it opens without necessarily crashing.

When my Hypergraph is open and minimized it will not open again with a hotkey. I have to find it and open it manually.

When I hit the S key my workspace switches to sculpting.

The interface font is too bloody small for my eyes. And the monitor that the company provides is what it is. I can't ask for a bigger monitor just because Maya decided to make the font so small. Scaling up the interface through the preference causes too many other problems.

The MayaStrings file that I have edited cannot be replaced because I don't have administrative privileges. So even reading the menus is difficult. Thanks a lot Maya developers and managers. You deserve a special Xmas gift for this. Something really smelly.

Alt+V to start playback rarely works. The mouse focus is almost always stuck somewhere else.

Typing a value in the Attribute editor and hitting TAB causes the Attribute editor to scroll to the next field. That didn't use to be like this before QT.

Who cares? I do. 

EVERY NEW FEATURE you add to this crappy program should have an option to be disabled. And not through an environment variable in the Maya.env. EVERY NEW FEATURE!

Goodnight Maya team. Keep the bugs coming. It's what you do best.

Vomit.(Sorry)

[Discussion_Admin]

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[Anonymous]

I do have feedback on your "product". It's in the previous message. If you had any brains you would freaking read it and let it sink in. But  you don't. And it shows in your "product".

[Discussion_Admin]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I do have feedback on your "product". It's in the previous message. If you had any brains you would freaking read it and let it sink in. But  you don't. And it shows in your "product".

---

I'll try again since you seem upset with me trying to help direct you where your thoughts\feedback will be heard

Again this is not the place for the feedback you are presenting. Please reread my other post in this thread on directions\instructions on how to proceed.

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[Anonymous]

What you may be failing to understand is that I don't really care about where you think I should submit feedback. Your product is too broken for me to bother to submit any more feedback, bug reports and step by step instructions of how to replicate the problems. Maya is hurting my projects and my relationship with my customers. It is costing me too much time and money to get it to do anything anymore. The product, the developers and the management  behind this product have proven to be more than unreliable. I am being as polite as I can be at this point. Your product has failed to deliver in so many ways so many times. My feedback is here to present the truth. With no hope that anything will ever be fixed enough again. And that is entirely your company's fault. Do some soul searching. Submit this to the management. Let them know that someone out there has had enough. Perhaps more than just someone. You have destroyed what some considered to be the industry standard. One tool at I time. See ya.

[mspeer]

Hi!

There seems to be a bigger problem with particles and Lifespan set to anything other than "Infinite" in Maya 2017 and Maya 2018.

See also this:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-dynamics/nparticle-lifespanpp-ignored-when-used-as-fluid-emitter...

Please report this problem (bug?) to Autodesk.
Help -> Speak Back -> Report a Problem

[Anonymous]

>There seems to be a bigger problem with particles and Lifespan

Who's going to fix it? Duncan? There are bugs in tools he has created that are older than the Iraq war. Talk about job security. That man should never be allowed to write another line of code. Stick to playing the piano.

[Anonymous]

I'll just tell the client to take their business elsewhere until Duncan gets around to fixing this bug.

How long before you think it will be fixed?

Should I check back in say... 20 years? When Maya 2038 goes "golden". Or maybe 20 years is too soon for Duncan to get around to it.

It's kind of funny that everybody knows what is broken and what isn't, except for the developers. Supposedly.

Do Maya developers not have enough time to do their work right? They should quit then. Go work for a real software company if that is the case. Stop releasing this unusable garbage.

People actually invest in Autodesk stock. Now that's what's really f'd up.

What a f'n waste of time.

[toldaddy]

This drives me absolutely crazy, and you're right it's one more bug in the minefield of Maya that we have to navigate.

With that said anyone needing to set initial state with a lifespan you can do it with lifespanPP.

On the particle shape node>Lifespan>Lifespan Mode set it to lifespanPP only.

Now scroll down to Per Particle (Array) attributes, right click the Lifespan PP grey expression area and click "Runtime Before Dynamics.

Copy the attribute name in "Selected Object and Attribute" and paste it below. It will look like "nParticleShape1.lifespanPP"

Simply add "= 4;" after it replacing 4 with the lifespan you want for your particles. So it looks like:

"nParticleShape1.lifespanPP = 4;"

Now you can set initial state...

[simondebrun]

Incredible! Maya 2022 and this is still an issue. 

[sepu6]

Use the Bifrost graph and forget about the N system. well, Ncloth still is better than MPM. But when MPM becomes more mature I would say forget about the n because they won't update it anymore. 

BF is faster and procedural and you can do more with than nparticles