Running multiple copies of Maya at once on OSX

[Anonymous]

Hello all,

Wondering if anyone has experience keeping multiple copies of Maya open at once on Mac OSX. 

I've read that this can be implemented using the command line interface; tried it but had no luck.

I should add that I'm using a Mac in production studio where I'm not the admin so I'm running Maya on secondary user account.

I'd be hugely grateful for any help on the matter!

Cheers,

NF

[sean.heasley · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

Generally the command line is the only way to make that work on Mac.

To make sure that you are attempting it correctly I'll post the command below:

- open /Applications/Autodesk/maya20018/Maya.app

That should work but some users have had to use the -n switch which forces a new instance.

So with Maya already open, from the terminal you can type:

open -n /Applications/Autodesk/maya2008/Maya.app 

Let me know if this helps!

Please hit the Accept as Solution button if my post fully solves your issue, or reply with additional details if the problem persists.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[Anonymous]

On my end, what Sean posted is what worked for me. I've previously added the /bin location to my system PATH variable in order to render from the CLI, but the Maya GUI would refuse to launch in this instance. It was giving me errors about the MAYA_LOCATION environment variables which unfortunately is not supposed to be set on OSX. So just running 'maya' does not work. If you run the open command it will launch another shell rather than open in the current shell, so you can have multi-tabbed shells like you can on Linux for managing your Maya sessions.

to make your life easier, if you edit ~/.bash_profile and add "alias admaya='<Sean's command>'" then just typing 'admaya' will launch it for you, rather than typing the path every time. 

[sean.heasley · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous just checking in, are you still having this issue?

[sean.heasley · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous did my solution help at all?

[Anonymous]

Hi Sean,

Sorry for the late reply - I wasn't able to address the matter until today.

Your advice was taken and it's worked out well! Many thanks for your help and expertise!

Cheers,

Nicholas

[Anonymous]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I understand what you're advising here:

>>>I've previously added the /bin location to my system PATH variable in order to render from the CLI, but the Maya GUI would refuse to launch in this instance.

Is this assuming I'd want to send render output from either of the open instances of Maya?

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@Anonymous wrote:

On my end, what Sean posted is what worked for me. I've previously added the /bin location to my system PATH variable in order to render from the CLI, but the Maya GUI would refuse to launch in this instance. It was giving me errors about the MAYA_LOCATION environment variables which unfortunately is not supposed to be set on OSX. So just running 'maya' does not work. If you run the open command it will launch another shell rather than open in the current shell, so you can have multi-tabbed shells like you can on Linux for managing your Maya sessions.

to make your life easier, if you edit ~/.bash_profile and add "alias admaya='<Sean's command>'" then just typing 'admaya' will launch it for you, rather than typing the path every time. 

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[Anonymous]

Hi @sales

For operating systems, there's an environment variable called PATH, and any executable that's resides on this path can be launched without having your shell actively in the executables directory. Some common executables you might be familiar with are sudo, grep, python, open, find. These executables live in (or are linked to) a directory that is on your PATH.

For Maya, the two most practical applications (or executables) are maya and Render. Maya is the actual application that will launch the GUI, and Render will allow you to render scenes from the command line without having to launch the Maya GUI. This is advantageous as you can save system resources by using the command line and not creating a GUI instance.

By adding the location of these binaries (/Applications/Autodesk/Maya<Version>/Maya.app/Contents/bin) to the PATH (PATH=$PATH:<Location>) in the .bash_profile file, you can access them from anywhere on your system.

The Render binary works totally fine on macOS, but the Maya binary can't be launched from the command line in this style. One of the reasons is the use of the MAYA_LOCATION variable which doesn't work on macOS. But if you use the open command the way @sean.heasley detailed Maya will launch fine. Hopefully this all makes sense!

I apologize if this sounds like I'm explaining it to child, I want to make sure other users who don't know this stuff get a clear understanding.