Point Maya At A Custom Icons Folder

[loganb]

I have a folder of custom icons i want to use.

can I add this folder to maya's environment paths?

[pixl]

To find the icon director(ies), you can use (MEL):
getenv XBMLANGPATH;

Generally speaking, your icons will be in:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\maya\2008-x64\prefs\icons

Additional icon paths can be specified, separated by semicolons, in Maya.env
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\maya\2008-x64\Maya.env:
XBMLANGPATH = C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\maya\2008-x64\prefs\icons\zoo;...

Note that if, in a shelf file, relative (probably also absolute) directories are specified for icon locations, those locations do not need to added to the XBMLANGPATH.
ie, in shelf_Tiny.mel, the images are referenced as follows:
-image "tiny/key_body.xpm"
So if you add a "tiny" folder in your icons folder, you don't need to add it to your XBMLANGPATH
ie: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\maya\2008-x64\prefs\icons\tiny contains the images for shelf_Tiny.

Hope that helps.

[loganb]

getenv XBMLANGPATH;
lists the folder i put the icons in, I'm just not seeing them.

I notice that when I try to edit the shelf buttons to load the missing icons,
i get a 'not a valid icon' error, so that's probably the actual problem.

the icons are all BMPs saved from photoshop
I've tried saving as 16,24 and 32 bits...still not valid.
what kind of BMP will Maya see as a valid icon?

is tehre an .xpm plugin for photoshop?

[loganb]

to answer my own questions...

No, there is no photoshop plugin for xpm files ...at least not one that is easily found.
After banging my head against google an adobe's site for an hour,

I tried converting my bmp's to xpm's form maya, using this:

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/me.../misc/2490.html

but it seems to not work either.

I tried to use imgcvt to do it , with teh result " imgcvt: unknown output image type - xpm."

in the help files, xpm is not listed as one of the supported formats

In my googling, it seems that this problem has happened to other as well:
They make a custom icon as a bmp, and use it successfully
Then they move workstations or install new maya versions, and the custom icons disappear
trying to manually load them to a shelf =" not a valid icon"

Seems odd that what once worked now does not. any idea why Maya 'forgets' that the bmps are actually valid?
seems odd that people have suggested (and scripted) converting to xpm with imgcvt, when it doesn't actually work.

My new solution : screw it! I'll just use text labels.

[pixl]

I haven't run into that yet. But good to know there is an easy way to convert to xpm, even though it seems like a waste of time.
Maybe the next version will support png for icons.

[joojaa]

Interesting this seems to work for me

imgcvt -f iff -t xpm furball.iff furball.xpm

I think youll find gimp does xpm's too.