.ma file has all the data but scene is next to empty when opening

[imanetomasi01]

hello,

Im a student working on maya 2024.

Ive been working on this animation project but something went wrong with my scene when i tried to open it.

The character, the rigg and the animation were not there and i can only see the the pants of the character in bright green, like there is Uv problem and no texture.

The scene was saved in .ma and all the informations seem to be in the file (all the datas seem here in the worldpad) but just the content in the scene disapeared. 

this animation is quite important for me considering its a project i have to give for my shcool quite soon.

I would appreciate it so much if someone could help me with finding some kind of solution. 

thank you so much

[stephenkmann · Accepted solution]

Looks like you have ngSkinTools implemented in that rig file and some sort of picker. 

Without those plug-ins loaded. you will have lots of errors.

# Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 9: Plug-in, "rfm_volume_aggregate_set.py", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# # Traceback (most recent call last):
# # File "<maya console>", line 1, in <module>
# # RuntimeError: Plug-in, "rfm_volume_aggregate_set.py", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 11: Plug-in, "RenderMan_for_Maya.py", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# # Traceback (most recent call last):
# # File "<maya console>", line 1, in <module>
# # RuntimeError: Plug-in, "RenderMan_for_Maya.py", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 17: Plug-in, "AT_MPView", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# # Traceback (most recent call last):
# # File "<maya console>", line 1, in <module>
# # RuntimeError: Plug-in, "AT_MPView", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 18: Plug-in, "RoadkillPro2012_amd64", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# # Traceback (most recent call last):
# # File "<maya console>", line 1, in <module>
# # RuntimeError: Plug-in, "RoadkillPro2012_amd64", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 19: Plug-in, "SLFxShader", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# # Traceback (most recent call last):
# # File "<maya console>", line 1, in <module>
# # RuntimeError: Plug-in, "SLFxShader", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 20: Plug-in, "ngSkinTools", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# # Traceback (most recent call last):
# # File "<maya console>", line 1, in <module>
# # RuntimeError: Plug-in, "ngSkinTools", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 21: Plug-in, "sampleData", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
# # Traceback (most recent call last):
# # File "<maya console>", line 1, in <module>
# # RuntimeError: Plug-in, "sampleData", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
// Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 40648: The mesh 'Gloves_GeoShapeOrig' has no '.cach[0].cdis' attribute.
// Error: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 40648: setAttr: No object matches name: .cach[0].cdis
// Warning: file: C:/Users/steph/Downloads/Leo_medieval_Fight/Leo_medieval_Fight.ma line 41475: Unrecognized node type 'ngSkinLayerData'; preserving node information during this session.

[FirespriteNate]

Those plug-in errors are not really relevant atm, as we have to assume the OP has those plug-ins available.

I'm sorry to say OP, that the file you have provided is incomplete. It just ends halfway through a skinCluster node definition, in other words it didn't save correctly, and there are no scene connections in the file, which means it's essentially corrupt and useless. As it's ASCII format, there is the potential you could rescue something from it, but this is a very tedious and difficult process that even the very techy could struggle with.

You should check in the the same folder to see if you have any temp files, if the scene failed to fully save, there may be a backup temp file still there (it may have a weird name or extension, but you should be able to rename it as .ma and open it) but it will be your last save, so you will still lose some work, just maybe not the entire scene. 

My advice is to make sure you enable save backups, so if this happens at least you don't lose everything, and every time you save a scene, especially if it's the last one before you close Maya, make sure there are no errors reported in the Script Editor, post save.

EDIT: on a whim I decided to re-check the file, to see what was there that might be recovered and I found that there appears to be a complete saved scene inside the top 10% of the file, and then 90% of ASCII junk after it. I deleted all the junk and saved the relevant remaining scene data, You could try opening this and see if it's any better. If not I suspect the original appraisal was still correct, in that Maya barfed while saving and you just ended up with corrupt junk.

[FirespriteNate]

One other thing I've noticed is that all the scriptNode code (which appears to be something to do with the Animation Picker?) is Python2.x format, which is not compatible with Maya 2024. Was this file originally created or edited in a lower (pre-2023) version of Maya? If if was created in an older Maya and you've simply opened it and edited it in 2024, then none of that animation code will work. I wouldn't have thought this would cause such a catastrophic loss of your scene data though.

[imanetomasi01]

ok thank you so much ! found a solution so everything is okay