After lots of trial and error and then lots of back and forth with tech support.. I am now aware that if you move a maya file outside its original project directory.. maya will ALWAYS store and look for the absolute path to textures/references first. Always.. This is a nice feature but can cause big problems in some cases which seems totally unnecessary.. Why not give the user the option on a scene by scene file basis.. of choosing how maya responds..
ON - maya looks for relative path only. Fails if not found
OFF - maya looks for relative path but reverts to absolute path if relative cant be found
with additional fields to:
- see and possibly edit the stored absolute path
- see and edit the stored relative path
