Error Message

# 1 30-08-2012 , 09:08 AM

Registered User
Join Date: May 2012

Posts: 31

Hi, whenever i open a file i get the following message

// Error while parsing arguments. //

what does this mean?

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# 2 30-08-2012 , 10:39 AM

Moderator
Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Michigan, USA

Posts: 2,998

all I can do is lol!

Welcome to the hell that is MAYA my friend! I get that almost every time I open a scene file now, and if you turn on stack tracing and line numbers it will probably always be the same liine number. For me it's error parsing arguments line 762 every time!

The file opens in wireframe and the grid and other preferences are messed up and the only way to fix it is to blow away the maya folder or userprefs and regenerate a fresh one!

(1) The other problems I get consistantly are the screen will stop updating and the outliner and channel box will go blank and I have to close and reopen maya.

(2) Maya will crash when you try to delete history

(3) Material nodes will appear in the outliner for every material in your scene and you cannot remove them! If you delete the node the material is also deleted. Every new material shows up in the outliner. The list can grow so large that the outliner is impossible to use as it becomes pages and pages of stuff and you can't turn it off!

Once again the only solution is to delete the maya folder and rebuild all the preferences.

(4) just recently I have had a couple cases of Maya saving files and then I go to open them up and they are corrupted and all the autosaves and increment saves will also be corrupted. I had over 40 backup copies of a job I spent days on and every one was corrupted and so I lost all my work!

I got fed up and started running the visual studio debugger and keeping all the crash dumps. I called autodesk support and have filed numerous tickets and for the longest time they just denied there was a problem or it was something I was doing wrong!

Well I am here to tell you I am a senior systems engineer and have used computers for over 30 years. I use dozens of appliation as complicated or more so then Maya but only Maya has all kinds of stability issues. I run 4 machines, they have different hals, hardware, and software and all 4 have the same issues with Maya.

I used Maya since version 1.0 and I had no major issues until the 2010 release. Ever since 2010 it's been nightmare to point where I look forward to using Maya as much as I would look forward to having a tooth extracted anally without anesthetic!

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 30-08-2012 at 06:55 PM.

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# 3 30-08-2012 , 10:44 AM

Moderator
Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Michigan, USA

Posts: 2,998

So in short get used to it and hope that is the only bug you run into. for the most part I think everyone that gets that message now just calls it a "FEATURE" and ignores it and preys their scene file is not corrupted.

It's sad that something this expensive is so messed up. And what is more infuriating is they just keep plowing out .5 releases and special releases that do nothing but cause all kinds of problems with plugins and addons!

Yet the have not touched the modeling tools and the NURB's and Subd tools have actually gotten worse! They were already terrible at release but it's like all the programmers that worked on them have left and they have some poor intern named Bob trying to maintain them and they are actually becoming more flaky then they already were!

Autodesk for the love of god STOP! Just STOP! Take a deep breath, freeze feature development and fix the BUGS! I mean some of these bugs have been around now for years, and are documented and acknowledged by autodesk and even go back to alias, yet they just keep coming out with release after release without seeming to even try to fix the bugs!

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 30-08-2012 at 11:02 AM.

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# 4 30-08-2012 , 11:19 AM

Registered User
Join Date: May 2012

Posts: 31

How do i delete the maya folder and rebuild all the preferences?

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# 5 30-08-2012 , 12:47 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Just rename the folder prefs to prefs_old, and maya will create a fresh new folder with all default prefs. The prefs folder should be in your maya2013 folder in My documents\maya\

-stwert

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# 6 30-08-2012 , 07:04 PM

Moderator
Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Michigan, USA

Posts: 2,998

UPDATE: To reset the preferences go to the maya/20xx-xx folder in your user/documents folder and in the prefs folder just delete the file userprefs.mel. This will leave your hotkeys, shelves, scripts and addons intact.

If you delete the entire prefs folder you will wipe your shelves, hotkeys, marking menus, and some scripts. All that seems to get corrupted is the userprefs.mel file so this is all that normally must be deleted.

What I do is create a copy of that file (A KNOWN GOOD ONE!) and then create and run this script that I now keep on my desktop since it's something I need to do several times a day (thank you autodesk may I have another!).

file: fixprefs_2012.bat (I have one for 2013 as well since it is also borked!)

========== batch file to fix maya prefs ===============

@echo off
cd c:\users\ctbram\documents\maya\2012-x64\prefs
del userprefs.mel
copy "userPrefs - Copy.mel" userPrefs.mel
echo fixed Maya 2012 userPrefs.mel

pause

=========== end batch file =============

For major catastrophies I also keep a copy of the entire maya folder so I can just replace the entire folder if things get really screwed up. I recreate this copy whenver I add scripts or addons. This way if you have to completely wipe the maya folder you are not left with all your plugins, scripts, hotkeys, marking menus, and shelves ganked!

This is a fecking SERIOUS bugs and autodesk just simply ignores it and for the cost of maya it's TOTALLY unacceptable and I don't care if it affects a small number of cuxtomers the cause needs to be identified and fixed! I use dozens of applications as complex or more complex as Maya without any issues!

Maya has two problems one with managing memory and one with writing and reading data to and from disk! I have proved this with debug dumps when autosave crashes and when delete history crashes. In both cases I can show windows is either trying to access disk (reading or writing) or is trying to manage memory (alloc/dealloc). I have even sent the god damn dumps to autodesk and all I get back is the sound of crickets chirping!

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 30-08-2012 at 07:17 PM.

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