Maya freezing while in UV editor

[AJHaleDML5Q]

Maya keeps freezing while I work on UVs. It started on Saturday. I was working like normal, when all of a sudden, as I was trying to cut UVs, it froze. It would not let me click on anything, even to close the tab. I thought perhaps it was my computer freezing, but I opened a few other applications and they all worked fine. I'm a student at Full Sail University, so I contacted their tech support. They had me change the rendering engine, and after that, everything worked fine until last night. The exact same issue occurred. Full Sail tech suggested I try and uninstall Maya, then reinstall if this issue persisted. This morning, I did just that, and once again, everything worked...until now. I'm not sure what the issue is, it doesn't seem to be anything I'm doing. If anyone can help, that would be greatly appreciated!!

[Kahylan]

Hi!

UV editing creates a lot of history nodes. Depending on the model (especially with models with 500k+ Polygons) and the already existing history on it this can fill up Mayas alocated working memory, leading to a crash.

Try deleting the history on your object (Edit -> Delete by Type -> History) and then turning off Cunstruction History for the duration of the UV editing process.

I hope it helps!

[AJHaleDML5Q]

How do I turn off construction history?

[Kahylan]

Its a little icon with a clock on it in your status line tool bar. Here is more information on the topic:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-503E227B-EF49-4A78-B3CA-7EAC588017C9

[AJHaleDML5Q]

It worked for a few minutes - then crashed again.

[Kahylan]

Ok... Can you tell me a bit mor about the project? How many polygons are we talking about? How did you create the model, what Software are you planing on doing the texturing in?

[AJHaleDML5Q]

I managed to complete the project, despite the crashing. I textured it in Adobe 3D Substance Painter. I'm not sure exactly how many polygons, it was a large model because it was a human. We were given a silhouette as a reference, and told to make edge ring channels, either using planes or the cylinder caps (depending on the shape) around each shape on the silhouette and fill in the shape using whatever methods we preferred. Then we were told to extrude for thickness. Hope this makes sense, I may not be explaining it as well as my professor did!

[Kahylan]

I think I roughly get it^^

If the model was modeled this way, the polygon count likely wasn't the problem. These days that is one of the first assumptions made with repeated crashes, especially in student models, since students often take their models from a sculpting software like ZBrush without proper retopology. And having a sculpt with Millions of polys in the scene can easily crash Maya.

But with the approach you took, I think it is more likely that there was some improper geometry causing the problem. Likely N-Gons (Faces with more than 4 edges) or Lamina Faces (Multiple overlapping Faces that share all the same edges). Next time you run in a problem like this. Running the "Mesh> Clean-up..." command or the "Mesh>Retopologize" command before you start with the UV process might help.

But its great that you managed to finish the project anyways!

[AJHaleDML5Q]

I did the cleanup process a lot, but perhaps my settings on the cleanup tool weren't set to pick up all of those issues. So I'll try to readjust the settings. I'll also try the second option you suggested next time I have to UV. Thank you so much!