Are Maya layers broken?

Mr_Paris

I've been having a reoccurring problem with Maya's display layers system. If I do anything that deletes the history of a mesh, it will become perpetually stuck in whatever layer it was assigned to.

So say I put a piece of the roof in the "roof_1" layer. But later I delete its history, and want to add it to a different layer, like roof_2. It'll add it to roof 2, but whenever I click on roof_1, like if I want to make that layer invisisble, the piece I added to roof_2 goes invisible as well, like it's somehow still added to the roof_1 layer. It seems like the moment you delete history on an object in Maya the layer it was associated with almost becomes locked into it, instead of just resetting the mesh to the default layer properly. I'm using Maya 2011.

Is there any way to make it forget the previous layer association that is quick?

Thanks for any help

St.Sabath

yes indeed,i have had this numerous times on a daily basis at work aswell as at home. what i usually do is export the object as a obj real quick,and reimport so i can add it to a different layer,....its a pain though..:poly118:
sometimes it works if you remove it from the current layer,duplicate it then add the dupe to a new layer and remove the old object...
but it is a pain especially when you have stuff like multiple UV sets/Color Sets or vert colours on the mesh..

CheeseOnToast

It's a pain in the arse, yes. You don't have to do any export stuff though. Just open up the hypergraph : connections then select the purple line/arrow that joins your object to the unwanted layer then hit delete.

oglu

if the object is in a group it will also get hidden if you hide the layer with the group inside...

gsokol

I've been having a reoccurring problem with Maya's display layers system

Man, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I used layers all the time in 3dsMax...and in switching over to Maya this is probably the biggest dissapointment to me. I gave up on using layers all together for this reason.

Glad to see a few solutions in here

battlecow

Sometimes it's also a parenting issue. Unparent the object and assign it to the layer again.

SaferDan

oglu wrote: »

if the object is in a group it will also get hidden if you hide the layer with the group inside...

Yeah did you check your outliner to check it wasn't in a group that is assigned to a layer you do not want it to be in? If it is in a group just drag in out of the group and reassign it

Denny

There are weird things that can happen in Maya. It might be a case of the Shape node being added to the layer but the transform is not. I can't replicate this issue now but try this script below and see if it helps. Add it to a shelf button, select the problematic objects and click it.

// Get selection
string $selection[] = `ls -sl`;

// For all objects in selection
for($object in $selection){
    // Move them to defaultLayer
    editDisplayLayerMembers -nr defaultLayer $object;
    
    // Also get their shapes
    string $shapes[] = `listRelatives -c -type shape $object`;
    
    // And move each shape to defaultLayer
    for($shape in $shapes){
        editDisplayLayerMembers -nr defaultLayer $shape;
    }
}

If it doesn't work could someone replicate the issue and upload a scene?

Mr_Paris

Thanks alot for all the tips. I definitely think that some of the items were grouped, and I've had a ton of issues with "junk" data in the outliner from shape nodes in the past. All these are good ways to fix the problem. Something that also seems to reset the associations are combining different items together. But that might just be resetting the group and shape node associations.

As you can see here I had a ton of shape nodes and groups that were just junk data that seems to slowly build up the more combinations & extractions I do. Seems like this kind of garbage is unavoidable meh..

Denny

File > Optimize Scene! (use proper settings so you don't loose precious nodes)

Otherwise use Alt+Shift+D to delete history on selected objects.