There are two ways to set environment variables outside of Maya: using the standard operating system commands, or editing the Maya.env file. Using the Maya.env file is recommended so that you don’t clutter the standard environment settings with Maya-specific variables. You can also set up Maya.env as a roaming profile to be shared by many machines; this can be useful, for example, when you are performing distributed rendering among several Windows machines. See your networking documentation for details on setting up roaming profiles.
(All platforms) To set environment variables in a Maya.env file
(Mac OS X) Maya.env is a text file that you can create and edit with any text editor. If you use TextEdit or a word processing program, be sure to save it as an ASCII (basic) text file, not RTF. (In the TextEdit Preferences window, set New Document Format to Plain text, and under Saving, turn off the option Append “.txt” to plain text files.)
Because the .env extension is not recognized as a text file, you may need to open Maya.env from a word processing application instead of double-clicking the filename or icon.
<NAME>=<value>
MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = $MAYA_APP_DIR/scripts/test
MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = %MAYA_APP_DIR%\scripts\test
USER_SCRIPT_PATH = /Volumes/Sapphire/render/scenes/lego pov library/Library:/Volumes/Sapphire/render/scenes/maya/script:;
MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = $USER_SCRIPT_PATH:$MAYA_SCRIPT_BASE/scripts/test:$MAYA_SCRIPT_BASE/scripts/unsupported
SHARED_MAYA_DIR = HostName:/usr/localhome/public/maya/2009
MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = $SHARED_MAYA_DIR/scripts:$MAYA_APP_DIR/scripts/custom
MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = $SHARED_MAYA_DIR/plug-ins
TMPDIR = /disk2/tempspace
MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = %MAYA_APP_DIR%\scripts\test
MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = %MAYA_LOCATION%\devkit\plug-ins;%MAYA_LOCATION%\devkit\test
TMPDIR = D:\tempspace
We still recommend using the formatting conventions specific to your platform to avoid any possible errors (for example, copying and pasting paths between Maya.env and a shell).