Last Updated: June 7 2002

Maya 4.0 for IRIX Qualification, June 2001

This chart indicates recommended Operating Systems, overlays, patchsets, and additional patches at time of press. Please check www.aliaswavefront.com/qual_charts or your local sales office or reseller for latest information. 
Important Notice
Maya 4.0 will only run on IRIX 6.5.x.
Products Version Software Date
Maya Builder
4.0
200105310033
Maya Complete 4.0 200105310033
Maya Unlimited 4.0 200105310033

Please Note The Following:
  • Maya 4.0 has been qualified under IRIX 6.5 (only):

    • Maya 4.0 has been qualified under 6.5.12m only. Although it may perform reasonable under 6.5.8 or greater, it has not been tested. It will not run under IRIX 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4

  • How To Obtain IRIX 6.5 upgrades.

    • Customers with valid SGI software support can gain access to overlays through the worldwide web at support.sgi.com. Customers in North America can also call the Technical Assistance Center at 1-800-800-4744. International customers should call their local SGI office.

    Customers without worldwide web access should call the Technical Assistance Center or their local SGI office as indicated above.

  • Mental Ray for Maya: Is qualified for the same platforms that Maya is qualified on.

 

File Compatibility:
Maya 4.0 NT and IRIX Maya 4.0 can read Maya 3.x, 2.x, and 1.x format files.
Alias Maya 4.0 IRIX reads Alias 9.6 wire files. 
Maya 4.0 IRIX exports Alias 8.1 wire files.
MediaStudio Maya 4.0 IRIX will import any 3Design Geo files created since 4.2. 
Maya 4.0 will import OBJ files.
StudioPaint Maya 4.0 IRIX is compatible with StudioPaint 9.5
(with plugin) 
See the StudioPaint documentation for more details.
Others Maya 4.0 can read Adobe Illustrator EPS files, OBJ, DXF and IGES files. VRML2 files can be read via a standalone translator. 
Maya 4.0 exports OBJ, DXF, IGES, VRML2, RIB, RTG and GE2 files.

General Configuration
  • At least 128 MB of RAM is required and 256 MB or more is strongly recommended for any practical use of Maya.
  • It may be possible to successfully use Maya with a non-qualified or partially qualified configuration, but support and maintenance programs will be subject to the Alias Support services guidelines.
  • The configurations shown are subject to change, and additional qualified configurations may be added after qualification testing has been carried out.
  • The OS versions specified in this table are the ones used for the qualification process. While it may be possible to use Maya successfully on earlier or later versions, Alias cannot guarantee their performance or behaviour.
  • We do not recommend saving data directly from Maya to NFS or Novell Netware or other remote mounted file systems. We have received several reports of data corruption when saving in this method although we have been unable to reproduce this. 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 Developer's Tool Kit:
    To build Maya plug-ins, you must have MIPSpro C++ compiler version 7.2.1 or higher installed. We highly recommend upgrading to version 7.3.1.1m. Additionally, plug-ins for Maya 4.0 must be build on IRIX 6.5. Plug-ins built on IRIX 6.2, 6.3 or 6.4 will normally crash or behave improperly if loaded into Maya 4.0.


 

Maya 4.0 Qualification Chart
Supported Platforms
Hardware Qualified on IRIX... Known Problems
Octane2 R10000/R12000 V12 IRIX 6.5.12m [10]
Octane R10000/R12000 SI/SSI/MXI/ESI/ESSI/EMXI IRIX 6.5.12m [12]
Fuel R14000A V12 IRIX 6.5.15m + patches [15]
O2 R5000/R10000/R12000 IRIX 6.5.12m [9]
Indigo2 R4400/R4600/R10000 Impact Graphics  IRIX 6.5.12m [1][2]
Origin 200/2000 Tested on: IRIX 6.5.8m [13]
Unsupported Platforms
Octane2 R10000/R12000 V10 Unsupported: IRIX 6.5.12m [11] [14]
Octane2 R10000/R12000 V6 Unsupported: IRIX 6.5.12m [11] [14]
Onyx2 Infinite Reality2 Unsupported: IRIX 6.5.12m [6]
Onyx R10000 InfiniteReality Unsupported: IRIX 6.5.12m [6]
Onyx R4400 InfiniteReality Unsupported: IRIX 6.5.12m [6]
Any Indy with 8bit graphics  INTERACTIVE APPLICATIONS CANNOT RUN. For other purposes refer to Indy above
Indigo R4000 with 24 bit graphics  Unsupported: IRIX 6.5.12m  [8]
Indigo R4000 with 8 bit graphics  INTERACTIVE APPLICATIONS CANNOT RUN. For other purposes refer to Indigo above
Untested Platforms
Octane2 R10000/R12000 V8 Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m [10]
Octane R10000/R12000 Dual/Duo Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m  
Fuel R14000A V10 Untested: IRIX 6.5.15m  
Indigo2 R4000/R4400/R4600 Extreme Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m [5]
Indigo2 R4000/R4400/R4600 XZ Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m [5]
Indigo2 R4000/R4400/R4600 XL Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m [5]
Power Indigo2 R8000 Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m  
Onyx R10000 VTX/RealityEngine2 Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m [7]
Onyx R4400 RealityEngine2 Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m [7]
Power Onyx R8000 Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m  
Crimson All Models Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m  
Challenge R4400 Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m  
Power Challenge R8000/R10000 Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m  
Indy R4000/R4400/R4600/R5000 with 24bit graphics Untested: IRIX 6.5.12m [3][4]
  • For any product other than Render Software, all SGIs require a z-buffer, except Indy XL, and Indigo2 XL. Eight-bit graphics configurations are not supported. 
Platforms marked Untested: have not been tested in any way by Alias, and at time of press are NOT Qualified. However, based on all the information we have, if you encounter any problems we recommend you configure your Operating System as indicated.
Platforms marked Unsupported: indicate that Maya cannot operate to our standard of performance, stability or quality and at time of press are NOT Qualified.
 

Tip for identifying current OS.

The installed operating system can be identified using the command uname -R. This command displays the text label of the current OS.

Tip when installing patchsets: applicable patches

When installing patchsets you should use the option to install all applicable patches. In inst by using the i A command. In Software Manager select Panes -> Command from the menu, and enter i A in the command field when in Customize Installation mode.


 

Known Qualification related problems
[1] Indigo2 High Impact w/TRAM: In some cases, fcheck activated from within the Hardware Render Buffer fails to play sequence of images created with the Hardware Render Buffer. The sequence of images can be viewed with the standalone fcheck.
[2] Indigo2 High Impact w/o TRAM: In some cases, Hardware Texturing produces banding and artifacts.
[3] Indy 24bit: you are likely to encounter the following known problems: 
  • CVs and vertices may show through polygonal geometry in hardware shaded mode 
  • Under some circumstances, sprites in hardware shaded mode may appear broken up. 
  • Some workflows may cause screen refresh to be incorrect as you tumble and track views. Although it is unlikely that you will encounter this, changing to shaded mode and back will often correct the display. 
  • Transparency does not display correctly in Hardware Render Buffer.
  • Indy graphic systems may encounter minor graphics related problems that are not listed here in detail. These problems should not affect your workflow. 
[4] Indy XZ: you are likely to encounter the following known problems: 
  • File textures not transparent in xray mode and you will be unable to see CVs, vertices or other components of objects that are behind file mapped objects. 
  • Some surfaces may incorrectly appear white when rendered in the Hardware Render Buffer. 
  • Sometimes rendering a region in IPR doesn't display correctly. 
  • Indy graphic systems may encounter minor graphics related problems that are not listed here in detail. These problems should not affect your workflow. 
[5] Indigo2 Extreme & XZ: you are likely to encounter the following known problems: 
  • Hardware Render Buffer output - particularly of particles, may differ between Indigo2 graphic systems and other graphics systems. As Hardware Render Buffer entirely depends on the graphic hardware or its emulation, use caution when combining HW Render images created on different hardware. 
  • Some surfaces may incorrectly appear white when rendered in the Hardware Render Buffer. 
  • Some transparent/translucent surfaces may appear opaque when rendered in the Hardware Render Buffer. 
  • Some surfaces may appear to alter colour when viewed in shaded mode with Hardware Texturing ON depending as the camera zoom changes. 
  • Some workflows may cause screen refresh to be incorrect as you tumble and track views. Although it is unlikely that you will encounter this, changing to shaded mode and back will often correct the display. 
  • Indigo2 graphic systems may encounter minor graphics related problems that are not listed here in detail. These problems should not affect your workflow. 
[6] Infinite Reality and Infinite Reality 2 graphics: you are likely to encounter the following known problems: 
  • Hardware shading and texturing in model view and hardware render buffer can cause the Operating System desktop to hang/crash or maya to crash
  • Rendering a sequence in hardware render buffer may cause Maya to crash.
  • Caching an image sequence in Maya Live on InfiniteReality may cause Maya to crash.
  • Selection Handles, 1st and 2nd CVs, emitters, fields, clusters and edit points appear as black squares instead of their correct graphic. 
  • All pulldown menus turn black after importing image or after viewing a rendered sequence in the Hardware Render Buffer. 
  • Occasionally unselected CVs are not displayed in the right color. 
  • Occasionally the wrong textures are displayed in Hardware Texture mode. This usually happen after using the Hardware Render Buffer. 
[7] Onyx-RE2 systems: you are likely to encounter the following known problems: 
  • Attempting to perform a Hardware Render Buffer - Render Sequence may result in all black frames. 
  • Occasionally the wrong textures are displayed in Hardware Texture mode. This usually happen after using the Hardware Render Buffer. You may also encounter a number of other problems with shaded mode with textures and Hardware Render Buffer.
[8] Although Maya 4.0 will run on R4000 Indigo and Indy systems, the performance of Indigo R4000s is inadequate for most practical usages of Maya. 
Alias cannot guarantee that all functionality in this or future versions of Maya will operate. Due to a limitation of some models of R4000 Indigo and Indy systems, some features of Maya may cause crashes, or Maya may not launch at all, resulting in WARNING: Too many contiguous end-of-page jump or divide problems in [maya.exe]. 
There is no workaround for this. Due to these reasons, Indigo R4000 is no longer supported.
[9] On O2s image planes containing alpha channels do not display correctly and the Alpha Gain control for images planes does not work.
Gaps in particle streams.
[10] Menus can sometimes turn black and are un-readable.
System may crash after unloading Maya Live plugin. (get patch 4323)
Clearing the selection turns all wireframe outlines white.
Poor paint effects performance. Can't see what you're painting in 3D (paint effects window) while in shaded mode.
Hardware alpha dithering is using a 10bit RGB and a 2bit Alpha for the main window display and the HW render buffer instead of an 8bit RGBA, resulting in an imperfect transparency display.
6.5.11 users: Display and crash fixes available in patch 4298 (6.5.11 ONLY)
[11] Menus can sometimes turn black and are un-readable.
System may crash after unloading Maya Live plugin. (get patch 4323)
System may crash during particle playback.
Clearing the selection turns all wireframe outlines white.
Poor paint effects performance. Can't see what you're painting in 3D (paint effects window) while in shaded mode.
Gaps in particle streams.
Image plane set to alpha doesn't display until selected.
Hardware render of particles failed.
Hardware shading and IPR will often just stop working altogether.
[12] Extended use of 3D paint and IPR may eventually crash Maya4.0 on an EMXI.
Gaps in particle streams.
[13] At the current time this system has not been tested on a later operating system.
[14] The cards may not have enough memory to obtain a visual with depth buffer at larger screen resolutions (1920x1200), so objects may display incorrectly in shaded mode.
[15] sgi Fuel systems running IRIX 6.5.15 require the following patches:
4583 USB audio for Fuel
4609 VPro graphics limited-release bug fixes for Irix 6.5.15m and Irix 6.5.15f
4619 Poor NFS performance with if_ef on faster CPU's
 You may also encounter the following situation:
  • Playback of audio files lags behind the time slider.

    •  

    NOT SUPPORTED
    Maya 4.0 IS NOT QUALIFIED and NOT SUPPORTED on R4000 Indigo, R2000 and R3000 based systems: 
    • R4000 Indigo 
    • Professional Series 
    • Power Series 
    • Personal Iris 
    • R3000 Indigo 
    In addition, the following Graphics Systems ARE NOT QUALIFIED and NOT SUPPORTED: 
    • GT Graphics 
    • GTX Graphics 
    • VGX Graphics 
    • VGXT Graphics 
    • ANY 8-bit Graphics platform