General variables

MAYA_ALT_EN

If you have multiple license files in your FlexLM directory you can set this environment variable to uniquely define your Maya license file and speed up the Maya start time.

For example, set:

MAYA_ALT_EN = <
 pathToLicenseFile
>\Flexlm\maya.lic 
                        

where <pathToLicenseFile> is the path to your license file location.

MAYA_ALIAS_LICENSE_TIMEOUT

Restores the previous licensing behavior of trying to recover a lost license for 15 minutes rather than the default Autodesk standard of two hours.

MAYA_DEBUG_ENABLE_CRASH_REPORTING (Windows and Linux)

When Maya encounters a fatal error, this variable writes a crash report file (MayaCrashLog[yymmdd.hhmm].log) to the directory specified with the TMP environment variable. This file contains a detailed description of what Maya was doing when the failure occurred.

To enable this option, set the value equal to 1. To disable it, set the value to 0 (zero) or leave it undefined.

MAYA_DISABLE_BACKSPACE_DELETE (Windows and Linux)

Disables the functionality of the Backspace key. To enable this option, set the value equal to 1. To disable it, set the value to 0 (zero) or leave it undefined.

MAYA_FORCE_REF_READ

By default, if you reference a file multiple times, Maya only reads the file from disk the first time it is referenced. When processing subsequent references to that file, Maya copies the existing scene information from the initial read, rather than re-reading the file from disk. File referencing is done this way to optimize performance. Occasionally, this multiple reference optimization feature causes errors.

Setting the MAYA_FORCE_REF_READ environment variable turns off the file referencing optimization feature and forces all reference files to be explicitly read from disk. This can fix Maya's behavior in some situations that would otherwise be evaluated incorrectly, but may also slow down performance.

MAYA_PARALLEL_MEMCPY

Set this environment variable to 1 to enable parallel memory copy. In some cases, parallel memory copy is faster on Opteron and Nehalem based systems. However, it may also be slower on Xeon systems, in which case you may want to disable parallel memory.

Note

Another factor that may impact speed is the workload running in Maya.

MAYA_IP_TYPE

Use this environment variable to set your IP version, for example, ipv4.

MAYA_HELP_URL

This variable is used to override where help files are found. Maya pre-appends this value to its help paths to create a string which is passed to the browser.

You can use this to point Maya to a central help server, or set it to a http: URL to have Maya get its help files from a web site instead of the Maya help on your hard drive.

Incorrect use of this flag will prevent Maya Help from working within Maya.

MAYA_OVERRIDE_UI

If this environment variable is set, Maya won’t load the file initialLayout.mel, which creates the interface. You must specify an alternate file to run (for example, MAYA_OVERRIDE_UI = test.mel). This variable should only be specified if you want to completely replace Maya’s UI for your own, custom-programmed interface.

MAYA_PAINT_EFFECTS_THREADS

Paint Effects uses the multiple processors on your machine when painting and rendering. You can set this variable to control the number of processors used by Maya. The minimum is one (1) and the maximum is three (3).

WINEDITOR (Windows, Linux)

Allows you to override the Expression Editor and use your own editor. The editor must be set to run in the foreground.

MAYA_UI_LANGUAGE (Windows, Mac OS X)

Allows you to override the language setting of the current operating system. This is most useful when you want to run Maya in English on a Japanese or Chinese (Windows) operating system; otherwise, Maya picks up the language of the operating system and always runs in Japanese/Chinese.

Set the value of this environment variable to en_US (English) or ja_JP (Japanese) or zh_CN (Simplified Chinese).

ImportantYou must set the MAYA_UI_LANGUAGE environment variable via the System Preferences. Setting this environment variable in the Maya.env file does not affect Maya behavior. For more information on how to set this environment variable via the System Preferences, see Run Maya in English within a Japanese environment.

MAYA_DISALLOW_DUPLICATE_ATTRIBUTE_NAMES

This environment variable is disabled if it is not set. Set it to any string to enable it. It is disabled by default.

In Maya 2011 and below, no explicit test existed to ensure that attribute names were unique within a node. This could lead to ambiguity with commands such as setAttr NODE.DUPLICATED_ATTR 3.0. Some existing scripts, files, and/or plugins may rely on this ambiguous behavior; therefore, for backwards compatibility, this environment variable was introduced in Maya 2012. However, you are encouraged to discontinue this ambiguous behavior.

MAYA_USE_MALLOC

If you encounter problems with Maya stopping unexpectedly while loading a large scene, try setting this environment variable to 1. However, when this environment variable is set, Maya does not release the memory used when you select File > New; it only does when you quit Maya.

MAYA_USE_VARYING_INT

If you want to display large component ID numbers (>16777216) in Viewport 2.0, you must use a graphics card that supports integer varying input to geometry shaders; and in addition, set this environment variable to 1.

MAYA_DISABLE_CASCADING

Set this environment variable to any value to turn off license cascading for Maya.

MAYA_CER_INCLUDE_SCENE_NAME

Use this environment variable to determine whether your scene file name is included with your CER report to Autodesk. If this variable is not set, the scene name is shown as undisclosed.

• 0 = scene name is listed as undisclosed
• 1 = include only the file name
• 2 = include the full path/file name

MAYA_FORCE_PANEL_FOCUS

Set this environment variable to 0 so that when you have a Maya or Qt window over another window with a model panel (or a window such as the Outliner, Graph Editor, or any panel under Panels > Panel), hitting the Shift key does not cause the model panel's window to steal focus.

The default value of this variable is 1.

When this environment variable is set to 0, clicking a hotkey only affects the workspace that has focus. If you want to use the hotkey with a different workspace, you may need to click on the workspace to bring focus to that area before your hotkey takes effect.

MAYA_ENABLE_NG_CONSOLE_STATS

In Maya 2013, the Node Editor displays statistics (Nodes, Connections, Edges, Swatch Proxies, FPS, Scale) by default. In Maya 2014, the statistics are not displayed by default and you can view them by setting the environment variable MAYA_ENABLE_NG_CONSOLE_STATS to 1.

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