Maya 2015 wont let me name my lods

Ged

I have my lods ready but when I type "model_name_LOD1" it changes it to "model_name_LOD2" Aaaaarrgh!
Ive checked all the models in the scene and all the materials and there is nothing called model_name_LOD1 anywhere so I have no idea why it keeps renaming it! please help if you have had this issue before and know how to fix it.

Bartalon

Happens to me a lot in 2013 as well. Restarting the software seems to fix it in cases where you're certain no such object exists in the scene.

Ged

tried restarting and even importing all into a new scene. Still happens. The problem seems to start when I import my lod maya files into my current scene. it might be reserving the name of the file Ive imported into the scene somewhere...but its hidden from me...which is making it impossible to use that name on the model in the scene.

Ged

Ok I found the solution, or at least a work around for the bug, it is the name of the file being imported that is causing the problem!

You have to import a file that is NOT named the same as the object you want to name in maya. so for example if you are importing model_lod1.mb into your model_all_lods.mb file then you need to rename model_lod1.mb something that wont clash, eg. just importing xmodel_lod1.mb works fine and maya will then let you rename the imported object to model_lod1.

Bartalon

Good to know, thanks for posting your solution!

kodde

What service pack is this?
Tried to recreate your problem by mimicking your actions as I was intrigued. Can't recreate this issue. I'm running 2015 SP4 64-bit.

Ged

Ive tested on 2015 sp1 on mac and 2015 sp4 on pc and got the same result, not sure why its not happening on yours.

kodde

I managed to recreate it just now. No idea what I did differently.

Anyway, reason you can't rename the object to the same name as the filename is because as you import that file with the default import settings Maya will create a namespace for you with the same name as the filename. If you then try to name your newly import object with the same name as the filename then you get a name clash and Maya just iterates on the name with a new number.

The namespace is a way for Maya to solve potential name clashing. Ever noticed when you import objects that they get named "filename:objectname"? The "filename" part is the namespace.

You can mess around with the import settings if you don't want to use namespaces and there's a namespace editor under Window -> General Editors -> Namespace Editor.

Ged

that is so helpful thank you so much, had no idea the namespace editor even existed! when you already have complicated file structures keeping things neat in maya is important!

kodde

No problem. Glad I could help.