Setting Up A Scratch Disk For Maya...?

[tom-maples]

Hi guys not sure if it's possible but:

you know how in a lot of 2D programs like photoshop etc you can set up a scratch disk on a second physical drive (if your PC has 2 hard drives) for the program to do it's work on without competing against the rest of the drive that runs the OS (presumably the C drive on the first physical drive), i was wondering if there is a way to do this with maya to get it to run faster?

i ask because my computer and graphics card are just starting to lag a little when it comes to character animation and could do with a little boost while i get my uni work finished! long-term i will sort my life out and get a better graphics card and processor haha!

Cheers, Tom

[deke-kincaid]

Maya uses Windows/osx/linux scratch file, so just move that to another drive. Maya also writes some scratch files to the tmp directory, so just change the env variables in windows to put the tmp directory on another drive.

[tom-maples]

oh cool so it can be done, sorry when you say just move the scratch file to another drive, where would i find this scratch file to move it? obviously somewhere in the maya deirectories but am a bit of a noob so wouldn't know what was where and what i was allowed to move etc! am using maya 2009 on windows XP if that helps.

also sorry i actually dont know what an env variable is lol, could you please explain that process further? would that require windows always storing tmp files on the other physical diskl, and is there any chance that changing a setting like that could affect existing programs i'm using in a bad way? am on a pretty strict deadline atm and if my computer died in any way i'd be screwed so am slightly apprehensive to get in there and start scrambling windows settings haha!

cheers man any help is much appreciated!
Tom

[deke-kincaid]

QUOTE(punkjunkie0 @ 04/12/09, 04:51 PM) [snapback]305586[/snapback]
oh cool so it can be done, sorry when you say just move the scratch file to another drive, where would i find this scratch file to move it? obviously somewhere in the maya deirectories but am a bit of a noob so wouldn't know what was where and what i was allowed to move etc! am using maya 2009 on windows XP if that helps.
As I said, Maya uses the system scratch file(maya doesn't have it's own). So go into your System Control panel and there is a setting to put it elsewhere in there. I don't have a Windows box in front of me but I'm sure you can google how to do it in about 5 seconds.

QUOTE(punkjunkie0 @ 04/12/09, 04:51 PM) [snapback]305586[/snapback]
also sorry i actually dont know what an env variable is lol, could you please explain that process further? would that require windows always storing tmp files on the other physical diskl, and is there any chance that changing a setting like that could affect existing programs i'm using in a bad way? am on a pretty strict deadline atm and if my computer died in any way i'd be screwed so am slightly apprehensive to get in there and start scrambling windows settings haha!
Again, try googling "environment variable windows". It is somewhere in the system control panel. Yes it would require windows to put tmp junk files on another disk or another location. Personally I find it makes it easier to clean up all the shit windows leaves behind that likes to accumulate.

[tom-maples]

awesome, cheers beaker i'll give it a try!
Tom