OK, so somewhere in between maya 8.5 and maya 2010 it seems that Maya is having problems with relative vs. absolute paths over a network. Essentially, using maya 2010 for Windows xp x64 (might also be the case on x32, haven't checked yet), if a shared project directory is accessed from another computer, it converts all my textures to absolute paths (and yes the appropriate project is set before opening the file). e.g. textures/file.jpg is converted to E://maya/projects/mayaproject/textures/file.jpg. If I actually go to the other computer and load the same file, the textures remain relative like they should. it's only when I access from another machine does it go all absolute for no apparent reason. I thought at first it was a sharing network administration thing, but I tried an old file from maya 8.5 w/ 8.5 vs. 2010 and 8.5 retained the relative path while maya 2010 didn't.
A separate but, I believe, related issue is that when using render manager software, all paths are converted to absolute (i.e. it will render the scene on the local drive of the machine instead of the one designated by the network project path (e.g. instead of loading //computer/maya/mayaproject/scenes/scene.mb it will load E:maya/mayaproject/scenes/scene.mb). I know the render software's working ok because all the output images are stored where they should be on the network (not on individual comps).
I've searched everywhere for possible info about this, and I have no idea what's going on.
Please help!!