Finding commands you didn’t know about

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Here’s a post I recovered from my old and now deleted XSI_Support_Blog page on the Softimage wiki.

XSI ships with over 23002600 commands. Not all of them are logged in the script editor, and not all of them are documented. Here’s a crude way to search for commands with certain strings in their names. 

var c = Application.Commands;
LogMessage( c.Count );

oEnum = new Enumerator( c  ) ;

// Search for commands whose scripting name
// contains a specific string of characters.
// The search string is specified between the forward slashes.
// 
var re = /SetGlobal/ig;

for (;!oEnum.atEnd();oEnum.moveNext() )
{
	var oSelItem = oEnum.item() ;
	if ( oSelItem.ScriptingName.match( re ) )
	{
			LogMessage( oSelItem.scriptingname );
			//EditCommand( oSelItem.scriptingname );

	}
}

Here’s a related post from the Softimage community forumAREA.

If you want to find out a little more about an undocumented command, uncomment the EditCommand call to pop up the Command Details dialog box.


The case of the MatchMover license problem

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In this case, the customer was able to run the main application (Softimage), but MatchMover reported a fatal license problem:

License was not obtained
Tried ADLM 2011 (590D1 21012.0.0.F), error 43

License method:
environment variable MAYA_LICENSE_METHOD='network'

Product choice:
environment variable MAYA_LICENSE='adlm-590d1-2012.0.0f'

License method:
environment variable MAYA_ALT_EN is not set

In similar 3ds Max-related cases, the error looked like this:

License was not obtained
Tried ADLM 2011 (128D1 21012.0.0.F), error 43

License method:
environment variable MAYA_LICENSE_METHOD='standalone'

Product choice:
environment variable MAYA_LICENSE='adlm-128d1-2012.0.0f'

License method:
environment variable MAYA_ALT_EN is not set

In these kinds of cases, the first thing to try is setting the ADSK_MATCHMOVER_LICENSE environment variable. This environment variable can have the following values:

  • SOFTIMAGE
  • MAYA
  • 3DSMAX
  • 3DSMAXDESIGN

If that doesn’t work, then you’ll need to do some more troubleshooting.

If you create a c:\flexlm folder, MatchMover will create the log files adlm.log and MatchMoverLicense.log in the c:\flexlm folder.

adlm.log is the more useful of the two, and will contain log entries like this:

17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	Reason=Fatal error
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	ComputerName=MTLEXAMPLE
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	OS=6.1.7600.
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=612
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	VendorID=6 [ADLMPIT]
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	VendorError=12 [The root information in Product Information Table XML file is missing]
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	Reason=Fatal error
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	ComputerName=MTLEXAMPLE
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	OS=6.1.7600.
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=613
17200	2011/06/22	16:50:37	AdlmIntError=25 [The product key was not found]

If you see the errors [The product key was not found] and [The root information in Product Information Table XML file is missing], then see this post for more information on fixing the problem.

MatchMoverLicense.log typically is just pretty much the same text that you saw in the popup message dialog boxes:

====== BEGIN MAYA LICENSE DIAGNOSTICS Wed Jun 22 16:50:37 2011 ======
623848 ::: 2
623905 
623911 
623907 
623909 
623801 ::: m2010.016 win64, built Mar  2 2011 00:27:42
623802 ::: links in AdLM but not Flint
623833 ::: 'adlm'
623858 ::: 'en_US'
623912 
623913 
623824 ::: MAYA_LICENSE_METHOD 'standalone'
623823 ::: MAYA_LICENSE 'adlm-128d1-2012.0.0.f'
623826 ::: MAYA_ALT_EN
623830 ::: MAYA_LOCATION 'C:/Program Files/Autodesk/MatchMover2012'
623866 ::: 'C:/Program Files/Autodesk/MatchMover2012/adlm/en_US'
623846 ::: AdLM 4.0.35.0 (A035) win64
623807 ::: standalone MA 128D1 2012.0.0.F
623109 --- MA 128D1 2012.0.0.F 25
623837 ::: 0
623834 ::: 0
623838 ::: 
623805 ::: 
====== END MAYA LICENSE DIAGNOSTICS Wed Jun 22 16:50:37 2011 ======

A note about those MAYA env vars. You cannot override them by setting them before you start MatchMover. MatchMover appears to set them itself. For example, with ADSK_MATCHMOVER_LICENSE=3DSMAX, MAYA_LICENSE_METHOD comes from the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\3dsMax\14.0\MAX-1:409\ADLM\Type, where Type=2 is Standalone and Type=1 is Network.

Finally, to get more diagnotics (like what license MatchMover is actually trying to use), open a Command Prompt and run these commands:

cd C:\Program Files\Autodesk\MatchMover2012
set FLEXLM_DIAGNOSTICS=3
MatchMover.exe

You’ll get some pop-up dialog boxes with messages like this:

---------------------------
FLEXible License Manager
---------------------------
FLEXnet Licensing checkout error: License server system does not support this feature.
Feature:       85700MAXDES_2012_0F
License path:  @127.0.0.1;mtl-gohabsgo;C:/Program Files/Autodesk/MatchMover2012\*.lic;c:/flexlm\maya.lic;
FLEXnet Licensing error:-18,147
For further information, refer to the FLEXnet Licensing documentation,
available at "www.flexerasoftware.com".
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

The case of the slow render, low CPU usage, and framebuffers

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In this case, a customer reported low CPU usage and long render times for a pass that had many framebuffers.

After some investigation, we found that disabling On-Disk Framebuffers (mental ray settings, Framebuffer tab, under Advanced Settings) made a big difference:

// Disable On-Disk Framebuffers so framebuffers are stored in memory
SetValue("Passes.mentalray.VirtualFramebuffers", false, null);
OpenView("Render Preview", null);
// INFO : RC   0.4  info : wallclock  0:00:07.27 for rendering


// Enable On-Disk Framebuffers
// Slows down the render, and CPU usage is much lower on all cores
SetValue("Passes.mentalray.VirtualFramebuffers", true, null);
OpenView("Render Preview", null);
// INFO : RC   0.4  info : wallclock  0:01:15.31 for rendering

On vacation

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On vacation this week. Not going anywhere, just hanging out in Montreal.
I pre-scheduled my blog posts for the week, so as long as the weather is good I’ll try to stay away from the computer 😉

ERROR : 21000-REND-RegenerateMaps – Unspecified failure

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Third-party renderers, like Arnold or Maxwell, don’t support rendermap so you’ll get this error if you try to do a rendermap. In a recent case, the customer told us that he figured out that “the Maxwell render add-on was causing a conflict. Any old models I made with the add-on installed were affected, but new models created without the add on will bake textures just fine.”

Getting Texture Map colors in ICE

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I swear this didn’t work the first time I tried 😉 but you can use multiple texture maps.
Just don’t use the Explorer button in the Get Texture Map Color PPG.

Here’s how (hat tip to Letterbox):

  • Drag a Get Texture Map Color into your ICE tree.
    This node will get the color from the first Texure_Map property you created.
  • Then just copy and paste that node, double-click it, and edit the name of the property (eg, change it to “Texture_Map1”).

The Explorer doesn’t want to let you use any other texture map:

Friday Flashback #29

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2001 – The FX Tree would be introduced in the soon-to-be-announced XSI 2.0, and this softimage.com banner gave a sneak peak (on the left side, in the background very faintly, you can see a some FX Tree nodes, and on the right, you can see some FX tree scripting).

Click through the image above for a better view of what they’re talking about in this July 2001 thread from the XSI list:

-----Original Message-----
From: Jean-Louis
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 8:46 AM
To: XSI@Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: 2.0 Rumour+Speculation


And it looks all scriptable too: on the right of that same red banner you can
make out "FxTree.FileInput".
If it all turns out to be true I'll be over the moon.
--
Jean-Louis Billard
Graphics Dept. - Imaj
http://www.imajonline.com/


----- Original Message -----
From: "Meils Dühnforth" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 2:18 PM
Subject: RE: 2.0 Rumour+Speculation


Look at the interface screenshot shining through the red background at their
homepage top - definitely looks like a compositing tree!

Guess this is XSI 2.0 and not DS 5.0...

Meils Dühnforth
nhb studios


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