Error: Not A Valid Icon

[projectironwill]

A Tale of Icons...

So as I make new mel scripts that use .bmp files, if I place them in the C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\maya\7.0\prefs\icons, Maya will find them okay.

If I close Maya and move the new icons with the other icons in C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya7.0\extras\icons, Maya can't find the icons.

I then go to a Shelf Icon, and use the [Change Image...] button to see if it can be shown in the Image Preview. For some unknown reason, the preview show. If I press the [Open] button, I get "Error: Not a valid icon".

Now if I close Maya and place a copy of that icon or move it, and repeat the steps, Maya will show the icon okay in both the Shelf Change Image and the script tool.

This story can be totally flipped where if the Icons worked in C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya7.0\extras\icons, if moved to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\maya\7.0\prefs\icons, they won't work.

So why is this such a problem? Cause for some reason, if I place all my icons in BOTH directories... I get an C++ buffer overrun error when using the Hypershade. If I use the show inputs and outputs button or click on one of the tabs such as cameras, it crashed Maya.

If I remove all the icons from one of the directories, I can't crash Maya.

I just want all my icons to be in one directory. So I can transfer my tools and icons into one place.

Has anyone run into this "Error: Not a valid icon" issue with .bmp files?

Is there a tool to convert my .bmps into .xpm files that work 100%?

Even the zooTools icons have trouble loading if they are not in the C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\maya\7.0\prefs\icons directory.

Please Help!

Super thanks!

[naughty]

basically, Maya uses a path environment variable to control where it looks for icons. You can see what this path is by typing:

getenv XBMLANGPATH

C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya7.0\extras\icons is NOT in this path, so Maya will NOT look for icons there.

as for the crashes you are experiencing, I'm tempted to guess they are actually caused by something else.. however, there was (in version 5.0) a weird bug where Maya would crash when saving out shelves or marking menus if an icon had weird characters in the name (like $ or ^) or had a < or a > in the overlay name.. so maybe there's still something funky going on with names..?

if you really must, you can add your own folders to the XBMLANGPATH path by adding them to the maya.env file you should find in \my docs\maya\7.0\ but if you want to unify all your tools and icons into one place I STRONGLY suggest you look into modules as they are extremely easy and useful and are exactly for this type of thing.. there have been previous posts on this in the past here on highend, just do a search for "module"

:nathaN

P.S. Highend is doing some WEIRD things with posts.. has anyone else experienced any oddness when posting..?

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Naughty @ 09/26/06, 12:11 PM) [snapback]248558[/snapback]
P.S. Highend is doing some WEIRD things with posts.. has anyone else experienced any oddness when posting..?

Yes posts sometimes go to worng thread!