Autodesk Maya 2008 Extension 2
Graphics Hardware Qualification - Linux Platform

Last updated: Last updated: March 3rd 2008

Contents of this document

• Readme First (important information to read first)
• Graphics cards and drivers
• Caveats & Limitations
• Important Notes:
• Python
• Compiler requirements
• Hardware overlays on Nvidia Quadro FX Family
• Operating systems & caveats
• OpenMotif 2.2.3
• OpenGL Visuals
• Window manager
• Sound
• Linux qualification Kernels

Legend

Qualified
Qualified with caveats (refer to caveat list)
Qualification planned. Results coming shortly
Qualification failed due to serious problems.
Un-tested. No qualification planned - not applicable / not available

NVIDIA

Python

Maya 2008 for Linux uses Python 2.5.1 UCS4.

Compiler Requirements

Maya 2008 was compiled using gcc 4.1.2, on a RHEL 4 system. gcc 4.1.2 source code is available from http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.0/ .

The options to build the gcc 4.1.2. compiler used for Maya are:

gcc412 -v

Using built-in specs.
Target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Configured with: ../gcc-4.1.2/configure --prefix=/opt/gcc412 --program-suffix=412  --enable-shared  --enable-threads=posix  --enable-checking=release  --with-system-zlib  --enable-__cxa_atexit  --disable-libunwind-exceptions  --enable-languages=c,c++ Thread model: posix gcc version 4.1.2

Plugin developers should use the same configuration.

Hardware overlays on NVIDIA Quadro FX Family

To set hardware overlay planes on NVIDIA quadro cards you will need to enable "CIOverlay" in the 'xorg.conf' file. ex.

Section "Device"

Option "CIOverlay" "on"

Operating Systems

The Linux operating system is extremely flexible with regards to precise versioning of different components, drivers and libraries. Maya may behave very differently on superficially similar systems and while Autodesk will do our best to help solve problems that are probably due to operating system configuration issues, we may be unable to explain or determine the cause of a problem.

Internally at Autodesk we have stabilized on the following configurations. We provide this list for the purpose of aiding our customers, but we can make no guarantees to the reliability, stability or availability of these components. This is not a complete list of Linux configurations choices. This list includes important components that significantly affect Maya.

• Due to the many operating system and architecture differences between the supported platforms, the results of some operations will differ on different platforms. This is most noticeable with operations which iterate to reach their results -- leading to cumulatively large difference -- e.g., dynamics, some rendering. You may not be able to "mix and match" renderings on different platforms.
• We do not recommend saving data directly from Maya to NFS or other remote mounted file systems. We strongly recommend that you save the files locally and then copy the data to the mounted storage system
• When texture images are stored on systems remote from the rendering process, depending on network speed, specifications and load, it is possible that the renderer may be unable to access a texture file on demand and may 'drop' individual textures on a frame by frame basis. To reduce this occurrence store textures on a system local to the rendering process.
• Maya is not linked to be compatible with SELinux. If SELinux does not need to be enabled, don't enable it. The SELinux requirement may be addressed via two mechanisms after Maya has been installed:
  
  1) If you do not wish to use SELinux enforcement, you can disable it by running the `setenforce 0` command before starting X, or by adding selinux=0 to the end of the kernel line in /etc/grub.conf or change /etc/selinux/config and reboot.
  
  2) It may be possible to change the security context of the Maya libraries, with the chcon command.  This has not been tested.
• KDE klipper is known to have focusing issues with Maya, which may contribute to application instability. We recommend removing the applet from the panel and editing the config file, (~/.kde/share/config/klipperrcv), to disable KDE klipper.
• [$Version]
  update_info=klipperrc.upd:25082001,klipperrc.upd:kde3.1 ral]
  AutoStart=false

OpenMotif 2.2.3

Maya 2008 uses OpenMotif 2.2.3 as its GUI framework. The version used is OpenMotif 2.2.3 from ICS with additional updates from the OpenMotif CVS. Maya includes the library in its default lib directory. No action is required to use the proper library.

For more information, see http://www.motifzone.com/

OpenGL Visuals

Maya's choice of OpenGL visuals is RGBA 8/8/8/8 double buffer with depth buffer of 24 where applicable. Visuals available from the XServer can be found using the command glxinfo.

If Maya cannot obtain its preferred visual, it will fall back as possible to lower values. A warning will be issued in this case.

Set up the XServer so it is using direct rendering to get as many visuals as possible. Use a depth setting of 24, to enable 8 bits per component.

Window Manager

Qualification tests listed in this page have been performed under KDE version 3.5.X. Other window managers are likely to work just fine although they have not been tested and therefore they cannot be listed as "Qualified".

Sound

Autodesk is aware that sound reproduction inside Maya (scrubbing and playback) doesn't work on many sound cards on Linux. At this time sound reproduction may not be adequate for your purposes. Sound playback does behave correctly on some cards and some on-board/built-in sound devices.

SoundBlaster Live cards are currently known to provide inadequate performance for interactive sound playback, particularly scrubbing.

We are also aware that sound will not work on some sounds cards (e.g. Soundblaster 16) when another application is already using the sound system.