Solved: Saving file results in grayscale render

nattyc30 · ‎01-07-2021

Hi all,

I am a noob at Maya so I apologize if this is really obvious or has been addressed elsewhere, but I couldn't find it in the forums. This is using Maya 2020.

I have an object in Maya that renders nicely in color when you open the program, but as soon as you save a file and render again the color is gone.

Literally, the only change that is made is pressing CTRL+S, and reopening the same file. I'm attaching two images for comparison.

This holds true for both the Maya Hardware renderer and Arnold. I've tried reinstalling the program and it makes no difference.

Does anyone know how to get color back? I've messed around with virtually every render setting and none of them work (i.e. changing the render display channels, etc) - and keep in mind the only setting changed was saving the file and reopening.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

nattyc30 · ‎01-12-2021

Here's some more context:

The 3d object is a .fbx. I tried downloading Maya on a completely different laptop and had the same issue, so the problem is definitely not with a setting on my computer. Which means it has to be:

-something to do with the files themselves

-something to do with the way I'm saving/opening the files

-something wrong with Maya

-something I'm missing completely

I opened two separate instances of Maya and imported the fbx in one while opening the saved file in the other and put them side by side, you can see the hypershade in the attached image. As you can see the color has vanished, even though all the materials/textures are there.

It makes no difference if I save as .mb or .ma.

Someone please help me! What is going on, why can't I do something as simple as saving a file?

nattyc30 · ‎01-12-2021

Hi, so I figured out my own problem:

The issue was simply that I needed to repath my files. I bought the cg object I was using on CGTrader, and it contained file paths to textures from the creator's computer.

Just typing this into google:

https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk0323GW2Vh5toDsrC40yxJhsXcwZYw%3A1610491051350&ei=qyT-X7raFP...

And following the simple instructions to repath the broken file links (Windows->General Editor->File Path Editor), I was able to get the color to reappear immediately.

I'm going to mark this as solved and I hope you leave this up in case any other newcomers run into the same situation.

Thanks