General variables

MAYA_ALIAS_LICENSE_TIMEOUT

Restores the previous licensing behavior of trying to recover a lost license for 15 minutes rather than the default Autodesk standard of two hours.

MAYA_DEBUG_ENABLE_CRASH_REPORTING (Windows and Linux)

When Maya encounters a fatal error, this variable writes a crash report file (MayaCrashLog[yymmdd.hhmm].log) to the directory specified with the TMP environment variable. This file contains a detailed description of what Maya was doing when the failure occurred.

To enable this option, set the value equal to 1. To disable it, set the value to 0 (zero) or leave it undefined.

MAYA_DISABLE_BACKSPACE_DELETE (Windows and Linux)

Disables the functionality of the Backspace key. To enable this option, set the value equal to 1. To disable it, set the value to 0 (zero) or leave it undefined.

MAYA_ENABLE_MULTI_DRAW_CONSOLIDATION

Increases viewport performance by combining traditional consolidation for static objects and MultiDraw consolidation for non-deforming animated objects (including meshes, NURBS surfaces, NURBS curves, and other geometry) when drawing in the viewport.

This environment variable is enabled by default (MAYA_ENABLE_MULTI_DRAW_CONSOLIDATION=2).

Set other values as follows:

0 - only traditional static object consolidation

1 - MultiDraw consolidation for static objects and animated objects

Note: MultiDraw Consolidation is supported on most recent, supported, Linux and Windows GPU hardware and drivers. See the Maya Hardware Certification chart for more information.

Due to missing graphics stack support on Mac OS X, MultiDraw Consolidation is not available

MAYA_FORCE_REF_READ

By default, if you reference a file multiple times, Maya only reads the file from disk the first time it is referenced. When processing subsequent references to that file, Maya copies the existing scene information from the initial read, rather than re-reading the file from disk. File referencing is done this way to optimize performance. Occasionally, this multiple reference optimization feature causes errors.

Setting the MAYA_FORCE_REF_READ environment variable turns off the file referencing optimization feature and forces all reference files to be explicitly read from disk. This can fix Maya's behavior in some situations that would otherwise be evaluated incorrectly, but may also slow down performance.

MAYA_PARALLEL_MEMCPY

Set this environment variable to 1 to enable parallel memory copy. In some cases, parallel memory copy is faster on Opteron and Nehalem based systems. However, it may also be slower on Xeon systems, in which case you may want to disable parallel memory.

Note:

Another factor that may impact speed is the workload running in Maya.

MAYA_IP_TYPE

Use this environment variable to set your IP version, for example, ipv4.

MAYA_HELP_URL

This variable is used to override where help files are found. Maya pre-appends this value to its help paths to create a string which is passed to the browser.

You can use this to point Maya to a central help server, or set it to a http: URL to have Maya get its help files from a web site instead of the Maya help on your hard drive.

Incorrect use of this flag will prevent Maya Help from working within Maya.

MAYA_OVERRIDE_UI

If this environment variable is set, Maya won’t load the file initialLayout.mel, which creates the interface. You must specify an alternate file to run (for example, MAYA_OVERRIDE_UI = test.mel). This variable should only be specified if you want to completely replace Maya’s UI for your own, custom-programmed interface.

MAYA_PAINT_EFFECTS_THREADS

Paint Effects uses the multiple processors on your machine when painting and rendering. You can set this variable to control the number of processors used by Maya. The minimum is one (1) and the maximum is three (3).

WINEDITOR (Windows, Linux)

Allows you to override the Expression Editor and use your own editor. The editor must be set to run in the foreground.

MAYA_UI_LANGUAGE (Windows, Mac OS X)

Allows you to override the language setting of the current operating system. This is most useful when you want to run Maya in English on a Japanese or Chinese (Windows) operating system; otherwise, Maya picks up the language of the operating system and always runs in Japanese/Chinese.

Set the value of this environment variable to en_US (English) or ja_JP (Japanese) or zh_CN (Simplified Chinese).

Caution: You must set the MAYA_UI_LANGUAGE environment variable via the System Preferences. Setting this environment variable in the Maya.env file does not affect Maya behavior. For more information on how to set this environment variable via the System Preferences, see Run Maya in English within a Japanese environment.

MAYA_DISALLOW_DUPLICATE_ATTRIBUTE_NAMES

This environment variable is disabled if it is not set. Set it to any string to enable it. It is disabled by default.

In Maya 2011 and below, no explicit test existed to ensure that attribute names were unique within a node. This could lead to ambiguity with commands such as setAttr NODE.DUPLICATED_ATTR 3.0. Some existing scripts, files, and/or plugins may rely on this ambiguous behavior; therefore, for backwards compatibility, this environment variable was introduced in Maya 2012. However, you are encouraged to discontinue this ambiguous behavior.

MAYA_USE_MALLOC

If you encounter problems with Maya stopping unexpectedly while loading a large scene, try setting this environment variable to 1. However, when this environment variable is set, Maya does not release the memory used when you select File > New; it only does when you quit Maya.

MAYA_USE_VARYING_INT

If you want to display large component ID numbers (>16777216) in Viewport 2.0, you must use a graphics card that supports integer varying input to geometry shaders; and in addition, set this environment variable to 1.

MAYA_DISABLE_CASCADING

Set this environment variable to any value to turn off license cascading for Maya.

MAYA_CER_INCLUDE_SCENE_NAME

Use this environment variable to determine whether your scene file name is included with your CER report to Autodesk. If this variable is not set, the scene name is shown as undisclosed.

• 0 = scene name is listed as undisclosed
• 1 = include only the file name
• 2 = include the full path/file name

MAYA_FORCE_PANEL_FOCUS

Set this environment variable to 0 so that when you have a Maya or Qt window over another window with a model panel (or a window such as the Outliner, Graph Editor, or any panel under Panels > Panel), hitting the Shift key does not cause the model panel's window to steal focus.

The default value of this variable is 1.

When this environment variable is set to 0, clicking a hotkey only affects the workspace that has focus. If you want to use the hotkey with a different workspace, you may need to click on the workspace to bring focus to that area before your hotkey takes effect.

MAYA_ENABLE_NG_CONSOLE_STATS

In Maya 2013, the Node Editor displays statistics (Nodes, Connections, Edges, Swatch Proxies, FPS, Scale) by default. Currently, the statistics are not displayed by default and you can view them by setting the environment variable MAYA_ENABLE_NG_CONSOLE_STATS to 1.

MAYA_DISABLE_PLUGIN_SCENE_MODIFIED_WARNING

By default, if you load a plug-in that causes any change to the scene, a warning appears as follows: 'Loading plug-in Plug-inName has resulted in changes to the scene that may need to be saved.'

To disable this warning, set MAYA_DISABLE_PLUGIN_SCENE_MODIFIED_WARNING to 1.

MAYA_ENABLE_LEGACY_INCORRECT_NODE_NAMES

Previously, Maya accepted illegal names while creating and renaming nodes; for example, ns:0abc. As of Maya 2015, illegal node names are no longer valid. Each time you open, reference, or import a scene with illegal node names, a dialog appears informing you to update your scene and correct the illegal node names.

To disable the dialog for the current session of Maya, enable the checkbox. To disable the dialog permanently, set this environment variable to 1.

To list all nodes with illegal names, execute the command listNodesWithIncorrectNames.

For more information, see Troubleshoot illegal node names.

MAYA_SKIP_BLOCK_CHECK

Set this variable 1 to skip checking STDIN mode on exit. Maya will exit without waiting for STDIN to return to BLOCKING state.