Maya Timeline Is "blacked Out", How Do I Restore It?

[kalebw-wyman]

I am using Maya 8.5 Complete Service Pack 1, and my Timeline has become blacked out for some reason...

More specifically, the Timeline background is black, the current frame scrubber is on a white rectangle, and the current frame number is black text on white. All other frame numbers are black text on black background... so, they're not visible.
The red keyframe tick marks are also not showing up, even though I have an animated object selected. And... the click / shift+click+drag to move and scale a range of keyframes no longer works either.

Can someone please help?

I've tried everything I could think of...
Window > Settings/Preferences > Color Settings (Edit > Reset to Defaults)

Is there a preferences file I can throw out to fix this? Have I enabled some weird mode or something? Or is it an interface glitch?

Thanks in advance,

~K

[joojaa]

get new drivers... But it wont work on all gfx cards ist just one of those tings thats intenttionally crippled by the card manufacturers.

[kalebw-wyman]

The system I'm using is a Dual 2.7 GHz G5, 4.5 GB DDR SDRAM, and an ATI Radeon X800 XT w/ 256 MB VRAM, connected to a 30" Cinema Display. I'm surprised that this card wouldn't support proper display of the timeline in Maya.

It should be running the latest video card drivers from Apple... it's up-to-date with all software updates for 10.4.10.

I just dug around in the System Profiler, under Extensions, and it looks like this machine is using ATIRadeon9700.kext version 1.4.18, which is odd, considering it reports having an ATI Radeon X800 XT installed.

ATIRadeon9700:
Version: 1.4.18
Last Modified: 3/7/06 5:32 PM
Get Info String: ATIRadeon9700 1.4.18.21 (3378)
Location: /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeon9700.kext
kext Version: 4.1.8
Load Address: 0x8dc000
Valid: Yes
Authentic: Yes
Dependencies: Satisfied
Integrity: Correct

I'll see if I can dig up a more up to date .kext from the ATI Support page. I'm surprised this is running from the .kext above, and that Apple's original Mac OS X installation and Software Update didn't seem to install the proper graphics driver. WTF...

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Kaleb Wyman @ 10/22/07, 09:09 PM) [snapback]275247[/snapback]
I'll see if I can dig up a more up to date .kext from the ATI Support page. I'm surprised this is running from the .kext above, and that Apple's original Mac OS X installation and Software Update didn't seem to install the proper graphics driver. WTF...

Well, your making a serous mis judgment about how computer engineering and things in general work.

Newer more up to date don't equate to less problems, it just means new fixes and different problems. So getting newer might not be the amswer. Besides apple or not ati has a bad track record on maya on all platforms.

QUOTE
It should be

nothing on any computers should be, when you get to the bleeding edge things start to bleed literary. And quite frankly none of us pay even half of what the things deserve.

PS: even if the computer you have is in your mind state of art and a good one all computers are more or less crap especially wn their price is in the sub 4000$ range, even then they suck unless the buyer actually spent a few moths examining the options and what works.

[kalebw-wyman]

Thanks for the tip about updating the video card drivers, Joojaa...
It totally worked, Maya's timeline appearance and keyframe editing functionality have been restored!

It was hard to dig up the right drivers, ATI's support website is a mess...

After getting the driver installers, and restarting in Safe Boot (by holding down shift at start-up), I updated the video card firmware and installed the ATI Displays 4.5.7 software panel too.

Here is the installation order that I followed:

1.) ati-radeon-10-3-6-jan2005.dmg
2.) aug2005-radeon-universal-rom-update.dmg
3.) macosx-ati-displays-4-5-7.dmg

Updaters #1 and #3 could be found from the Find a Driver quick link:
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Then, clicking on MAC OS X10.4.x > Radeon > Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition, which sends you to:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/mac/mac...-3x-radeon.html

The aug2005-radeon-universal-rom-update was hard to find though... it was not located from the Find a Driver link, surprisingly enough.

I had to go into the AMD Customer Care section of their website for ATI video cards, and click on the left-hand "AMD Customer Care Site Map", and expand out the following menus...

Radeon Support - Mac > Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition > Knowledgebase > ATI Software
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894

Finally, this returns a list of 3 knowledgebase articles, and #3 has the August Universal ROM update link...
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswe...uestionID=20026

These updates have added the following Preference Pane:

ATI Displays:
Version: 1.0.6
Supported by: 3rd Party
Visible: Yes
Identifier: com.ati.mac.d4sp
Location: /Library/PreferencePanes/ATIDisplaysSP.prefPane

Once this preference pane was installed, opened up ATI Displays, clicked on the 3D button on the left side panel, and added Maya.app to the application profile for OpenGL Overrides, and set it to the preset Best Quality.

For some reason, I think Best Quality was causing a problem within Maya viewports. Anytime I would try to marque select something on screen, the viewport would go blank. If I rotate or dolly the camera, the viewport would be restored.

So instead, I changed the ATI Displays preferences 3D > OpenGL Overrides for Maya to the preset of High Performance, and restarted Maya. All seems fine now.

Man, video cards can be such a pain... but then again, try living without one.

~K

[kalebw-wyman]

OK, the problem has returned.

Re-installing the latest ATI drivers has not repaired this problem for a second time, either.

The problem seemed to return after moving an IK handle... maybe it was just a coincidence, but the timeline is now all black again and keyframe tick marks don't show up. Even in a new scene, and even after restarting Maya and / or the computer, does not help.

I tried throwing out my workspace.mel but that didn't help either.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,

~K

[kalebw-wyman]

Solved it!!

Now I'm not sure if it's a video card limitation, or a bug in Maya 8.5 Service Pack 1, but Maya's timeline wigs out when the application window is expanded to the full available width of a 30" Cinema Display, which is a resolution of 2560x1600.

Resizing the width of Maya's application window beyond 2360 pixels, even by a single pixel, blacks out the timeline.

The height doesn't seem to affect the timeline... I have the height set to it's maximum size of 1577 (of 1600 pixels), which is as tall as the window can be opened due to the Apple title bar taking up the remaining 23 pixels.

As far as I can tell: either Maya 8.5 SP 1, or the ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition, has a maximum width limit of 2360 pixels, for displaying the timeline properly.

Can anyone test this on a large monitor, and preferably with a different video card, to confirm?

Thanks,

~K

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Kaleb Wyman @ 10/23/07, 04:22 AM) [snapback]275282[/snapback]
As far as I can tell: either Maya 8.5 SP 1, or the ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition, has a maximum width limit of 2360 pixels, for displaying the timeline properly.

Yes that progbably due to the fact that the cards onboard memory runs quite literary on its last legs, since not only is the combined buffers 32 M but you need to be able to store the same amount for the operating system and then youd ned to load the rest of the 3d graphics onto the memory too. plus all the other widnows.

Now this translates to the fact that the card may not be able to get a additional overlay pane to work poperly. Because the card it self might have some builtin limitations of what adresses are for whta kind of data.

When i last tested on a windows i had no problem running that wide images, mind though i was using a quadro plex station wich probably costs as much as your entire setup 2 times. (the cost is honestly not justified for normal users)

PS. Its not beyond the fact that the bug cant be in maya but it DOES have a classical ring of a gfx card limitation. This is exactly how they wopuld manifest themselves.

PPS. You can actually make changes to the maya laoyout so thet the timeline never gets so wide!
CODE
formLayout -edit
           -attachPosition TimeSliderForm "right" 5 88
           MayaWindow|mayaMainWindowForm;