Help! Maya Ascii Save, Renaming Mesh

#1

So I started running into this last night. I’m going back and forth from modo to Maya, for a commercial I’m working on. When I bring the MA file into modo there is no problem, I do my changes to the mesh, then Save out the MA file again. Sounds simple. But IF I now load that MA file into Maya or back into modo my mesh is now named with a “1” added to the end of it.

Example:

  1. Create a new modo project.
  2. Create a Unit sphere or cube or whatever. Note the name of the mesh, Probably “Mesh”
  3. Export as Maya Ascii
  4. Reload the File
  5. Note the name is now “Mesh1”
  6. repeat 3 - 5 Note the name is now “Mesh11”

Each time I run save a Maya Ascii file it adds a 1 to the name of my object. Please Confirm this is a bug or let me know if I’m doing something wrong. This makes it imposable for me to use modo on this project.

Thanks,
Brad

#2

It should always add a single one, but not multiples. I’ll have to take a look at it.

#3

Hey Eric, thanks for the quick reply… Why should it add a digit? I don’t want it to rename my mesh (or all my mesh latyers) for me.

This , for me, is causing a big problem. When I re-import it back to Maya my script wont work because it’s looking for specific names. So I have to rename every layer. Not sure why this is a good thing.

Thanks,
Brad

#4

In Maya all nodes are name based. If a name is duplicated then a digit is incremented and appended so you never have a duplicate name. In modo their is no restriction on naming so it is possible to have many different items/meshes/textures all with the same name. During export modo maintains its own namespace for Maya nodes. Numbering starts at 1 and climbs with each duplicated name. What would happen if it didn’t start with a number and then later it found a node it had to create with the same name it would have to try to go back and rename the original node and fix all the connections to use the new name. This could also result in different names going out to Maya if the items with the same name arrived in a different order and thus received different numbers as the name was incremented.

#5

Right, I get all this.

But what if there are no duplicate names. It seems that the way it is being handled now it is preemptively numerating my layers. I’m not trying to be a pain about it, it just seems weird that my software is renaming my work and I have no choice in the matter.

Understand that the reason this is a big deal is I’m dealing with a character setup used in our Maya character pipeline. The MA file has something like 110 layers when I bring it into modo. I then have to replace the existing mesh layers with the actually character parts and save it back out. When it is loaded back into Maya everything must have the exacts same name or the pipeline wont work. I’m almost done doing it the hard way but, If there is a way that you guys can work around over and through this it will be much appreciated in the future.

Thanks, for your help. I totally appreciate it.
Brad Hayes

#6

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.