Problem During V-Ray installation

[brainspoon]

When installing V-Ray on our network share we always get the error message

Failed : Modifying O:\LONGPATH\createMayaSoftwareCommonGlobalsTab.mel

Any specific reason why this happens? And what is actually done to that file? The rest of the install works flawless.

Cheers
Andreas

[vlado]

The V-Ray installer tries to do a minor modification to the said .mel file from the standard Maya installation in order to prevent an annoying error when you open the Render Settings dialog (there is a hard-coded check for Maya software and mental ray in the original version of the code, and causes an error to be shown for V-Ray). Since the file is missing on your network path, the installer fails to perform the modification and shows an error.

If the file is not modified, you will get an error when you open the Render Settings dialog for the first time and the V-Ray settings will not be shown right away - you'll need to click through the tabs a few times to get them to show up. It's not in any way fatal, but it is annoying.

This is in general a weak point in the Maya architecture; many 3rd party plugins (and all renderers I've looked at) need to either modify or override some of the standard Maya MEL scripts to add their custom code, and there is the potential that sooner or later things become a mess.

Best regards,
Vlado

[brainspoon]

Could you give me a pointer which edits have to be made? Then I will do them myself.

Thanks
Andreas

[vlado]

The installer makes the following changes.

In createMayaSoftwareCommonGlobalsTab.mel, it searches for

global proc updateMayaImageFormatControl()
{
	string $currentRenderer = currentRenderer();

and right after that inserts

	if (`currentRenderer` == "vray")
		return;

In shouldAppearInNodeCreateUI.mel, it searches for

global proc int shouldAppearInNodeCreateUI(string $type) {

and right after that inserts

	// Added by V-Ray, we don't want the user to create these directly
	if ($type=="VRayLightMesh") return false;
	if ($type=="VRayLightMeshLightLinking") return false;
	if ($type=="VRayPluginNodeTex") return false;
	if ($type=="VRayPluginNodeLightShape") return false;
	if ($type=="VRayPluginNodeVolume") return false;

In unifiedRenderGlobalsWindow.mel, it searches for

		if (($createProc == "createMayaSoftwareCommonGlobalsTab")
			|| ($createProc == "createMayaSoftwareGlobalsTab"))
		{
			eval($createProc);
		}

and right after that inserts

		if ($createProc == "vrayCreateVRayCommonGlobalsTab")
			eval($createProc);

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
Vlado

[brainspoon]

Cool thanks. Will try to implement it here.

[pechart]

I just recognized that those modifications are still necessary (Maya2017, most recent Vray nightly) to avoid the display glitch in the render settings when working with the .zip files with a netwok repository.
How do people handle this? Just overwrite the existing files on the clients with the appropriate files from the server? Or is there a better way?

[yolov]

What display glitch is this about exactly? (with 2017)