[toybox]

We've just recently updated to 2.7.20 from 2.6.10. We've been successfully using 2.6.10 with render layers in Maya but upon upgrading our configuration broke due to the unknown -l flag.

The Maya plugin version we were using when we were in Maxwell 2.6.10 was 2.6.23, and upon running running render.exe -r maxwell -help, it is clear that is a section on render layer/object parameters, and there is an -l flag.

Since then, we've updated the Maya plugin to version 2.7.8 in line with updating Maxwell, and running the -help yields only the -sel flag, which doesn't do what we need it to do.

Checking the documentation and there seems to be no reference to these flags as well.

I would just like to ask three things:

1. Have I missed something?
2. If I haven't, what is the latest Maya plugin version that still supported the -l feature?
3. And if this feature was indeed removed, why was this taken off? (That is much a real question as a rhetorical one - as a developer it's a bad trip because I have to write and debug set of breakout tools just to maintain the workflow we already have.)

[Mihnea Balta]

It was removed when we updated the flags to match mental ray. Autodesk renamed some flags and removed others when they released Maya 2008 and -l was among those removed. I haven't checked each flag in turn when I did this, I just took the common flags from the mental ray renderer description and added the Maxwell-specific flags. They probably made an error removing -l, because I see it's present in the Maya Software description file, and mental ray has it again starting with Maya 2009.

Anyway, I'll add it back for the next plug-in update. The last version which supports the flag is 2.6.27.

[Mihnea Balta]

Until we release the next update, you can replace the maxwellRender.xml file installed by the latest plug-in with the fixed version contained in this archive. The location of this file varies depending on the platform:

Windows: MAYA_DIRECTORY\bin\rendererDesc
OSX: MAYA_DIRECTORY/Maya.app/Contents/bin/rendererDesc and MAYA_DIRECTORY/Maya.app/Contents/MacOS/rendererDesc (it needs to be copied in both locations)
Linux: MAYA_DIRECTORY/bin/rendererDesc

[toybox]

Hi Mihnea, thanks for your reply and solution. An hour after posting I created a workaround directly on our controller's config which is almost identical to your xml fix (eg editRenderLayerGlobals). Thanks for your effort. And if the -l flag omission was a mistake, pardon me if I sounded too whiny. I've been working intensively for two weeks developing Maxwell for use with Royal Render (coop, resume rendering, etc), and it's been edgy this past week.