Customizing Maya On Startup

[rgkovach]

Hello, I wondering how I can set certain options (such as the Perspective Camera's Near and Far Clip Plane) such that every time I start Maya and create a New scene, those options are already set.

Thanks!

[joojaa]

Sure, but you do undertand that you should act as if maya was unitless and model in 1 cm being the unit you desire. So theers little or no need for this.

Also NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES CHNAGE MAYA DEFAULT UNITS. Its asking for trouble.

Also note that i wouldnt adjust the near far clippingplanes of the default much even tough you could det the wider of youd also be inviting more graphic artifacts for your screen

[tribesman]

I'm currently doing some tweaking with startup preferences. However there is only 1 file I'm modifying. I'm also getting some weird results from altering my camera clip plane defaults.

First, does anyone know what the default near and far clip planes are? I forget and changed them before writing them down.

Then for anyone interested you can access the directory:

C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya7\scripts\startup

and edit the values in the file called, "createPreferencesOptVars.mel"

In it you can change things like # of recently accessed projects, film to ntsc default units, # of undos, time-slider range, etc..

As far as changing the clip planes, maya doesn't seem to agree with the changes I've made in this file. I tried to change them to .01 and 1000. Instead on startup it defaults to .000 and 32.808. weird.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(mike_R @ 09/10/06, 06:22 AM) [snapback]247192[/snapback]
First, does anyone know what the default near and far clip planes are? I forget and changed them before writing them down.

0.1 and 1000, thing is that the difference between theese 2 figures is actualy what matters, so once you start making the gap bigger ypou loose precision. On some display cards more than on others. And yes the resiult of this is wierd indeed. So setting them to 0.001 and 1000000 is very stupid indeed.

Its actualy better to use viewClipPlane -acp; or something thet measures this into 0.1% -200% Bercaus ethen its allways right size.

QUOTE
C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya7\scripts\startup

You should never ever change anything under C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya7\scripts! What you do is you copy the file to your OWN scripts duirectory in my documents\maya\scripts And modify them there. This cause s maya to opt for your versuion of the file instead of the factory one, but youd still have a intact factory script, wich means you can allways rolback when (not if, it will eventualy happen) you screw up.

Anyway createPreferencesOptVars.mel is not the file you want to edit. Since its the one you run IF the user does not have those vars set. You should Edit your own prefs.

...whatever you sys is configured to...\My Documents\maya\X.X\prefs\userPrefs.mel

the lines

-fv "cameraFarClip" 10000
-fv "cameraNearClip" 0.1
-fv "defaultCameraFarClipValue" 1000
-fv "defaultCameraNearClipValue" 0.1

To be exact. NOte that you can also chage the 2 first easily in the gui too.

Anyway like i said you dont realy want to work in incor other usnuits since maya allways calculates units in cm and somethings like MR asume mayas cm is m and so on... Also normal maya zbufferr is 1/z in cm wich causes you to downgrade the redner results easily too.

So working in anything except one cm is whatever unit you wish to work in is actualy teh real way to go.