Changing Directory (my Documents\maya)

[boof]

Is there any way to change the directory where projects, scripts, preferences and so on are stored?

My only real attempt has been to modify "Maya 7.0.msi" by removing any references to %USERPROFILE% (which is C:\Documents and Settings) and changing that value to another directory. This, however, didn't seem to change anything and "My Documents\maya" and it's contents is still created when Maya loads.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[puppiesam]

If I understand your question, try this.

File>Project>Set>Choose wherever you want it to be> OK.

[drblacksnake]

No, perhaps he meant more global modification.
Well.. at least You can change default project path through Preferences->Files/Projects..

[joojaa]

YES! howverer one persistent limitation will remain theres NO way in hell you will get may put the base folders at teh root of a windows or unix dirve. NO way in hell not howmuch you pray it will crap maya up, if not at your cyurrent stage tehn at the next. However this is no biggie as its not realy a problem on multisuer envirpon and mayas not realy a single user software.

Now the first and easiest thing is to just move your entire my documents to some otherplace maya will follow the suite. Personlay we dont have any of the users mycodcs in the my documents and settings folder they are all mapped to W: wich is a network drive. Reason for this is actualy how windows handles the profile and that is everything in the my documents folder, now the profile works in a ugly manner in wich it is entirely copied over to the disk and when you log out ist copied back, however this leads to VERY much undesireable network traffic and allso leadts to HUGE possibility of error AFTER apparently succesful saves. So if you have roaming profiles i greatly suggest you do this in anycase.

To do the move choose your my documents floder and right click properties and mive it wherever you want.

Secondly maya respects a few ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES to govern where things are So by setting theese you can customize the lookup quite much infact any way you wish, except NOT into the base of a drive wont work in any situation. However this dont means the user has to know this as you can subst the drive to look like its a root for the user, but its not realy sane. Personaly i use a Explorer /e,/root,"%MAYA_PROJECT%" shortcut to view my projects for example (this can be added also as a simple irtual drive if you tweak the registry too but hey this is easy enough) Offcourse thets good enough plus it manages if i change teh location it know thjis aslong as someone updates the vars.

by defining the env var MAYA_APP_DIR you can spacify any folder anywahre on any unc drive you wish, but it MUST ba a folder as outlined above. Same appluys to MAYA_SHELF_PATH, MAYA_PROJECT, MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH,XBMLANGPATH all of wich you may wish to tweak if you move the location.

Shelf path and script path along with moddules path is aof special interest to maost bigger outfits since instead of just ONE scripts folder you can ahve any number of them wich makes managing them much easier.