Tag Archives: Installation

[MtoA] Running a silent install on Windows

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On Windows, if MtoA isn’t already installed, then the /S flag will do a silent install:

MtoA-1.2.7.3-2016.exe /S

You can also specify an install location with the /D flag:

MtoA-1.2.7.1-2016.exe /S /D=C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2016-1.2.7.1
There’s no help, but I found the /S and /D via Google:

There is no silent install on OSX or Linux.

If another version of MtoA is installed, there will be some pop-up dialogs. You can get around that by doing a silent uninstall, like this:
C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2016-1.2.7.1\uninstall.exe /S

or, if you want to keep the existing install around, you could do this:

reg DELETE HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\MtoA2016 /f

After you delete that registry key, an MtoA install won’t detect an existing installation, so you get to keep the old install, and install a new version.

 

[MtoA] Installing MtoA 1.0.0 on Linux

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A few notes:

  • You need root permissions to do the automatic installation.
  • Use sudo, not su. You want to install MtoA under your user account, not the root user account. sudo will let you install MtoA with root permissions, but under your own user account.
  • If you install as root, the MtoA installer copies mtoa.mod to /root/maya/2014-x64/modules. Unless you’re running Maya as root, that’s no good. You want the mtoa.mod file in your home directory (for example, /home/stephen/maya/2014-x64/modules). That way, when you run Maya it will load mtoa.mod and find the MtoA plugin.
  • The automatic installation also copies arnoldRenderer.xml to /usr/autodesk/maya2014-x64/bin/rendererDesc. That allows you to batch render with Arnold from Maya, without having to set MAYA_RENDER_DESC_PATH.

Another case of a missing entry point

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entry_point_not_found
In this case, a user installed the latest MtoA, but when he went to load mtoa.mll in the Plug-in Manager, he got this error:

---------------------------
Settings/Preferences: maya.exe - Entry Point Not Found
---------------------------
The procedure entry point ?IsRenderablePath@CArnoldSession@@SA_NVMDagPath@@@Z could not be located in the dynamic link library mtoa_api.dll.

From past experience, I knew that the problem was probably the Maya.env file. And sure enough, it looked something like this:

MAYA_RENDER_DESC_PATH = C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2013.0.22.0
PATH = %PATH%;C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2013.0.22.0\bin;
solidangle_LICENSE=5053@SOLIDANGLE-PC

MAYA_RENDER_DESC_PATH = C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2013.0.22.1
PATH = %PATH%;C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2013.0.22.1\bin;

Notice that there are two MAYA_RENDER_DESC_PATH and PATH settings. Maya reads just the top two, which are for an older version of mtoa, so when Maya loads mtoa.mll we end up with a “missing entry point” error.

How did this happen? Well, in this case, in-between installs and uninstalls of different versions MtoA, the user had updated Maya.env with his own MAYA_RENDER_DESC_PATH and PATH settings for MtoA. And then the next install of MtoA appended its own settings to the Maya.env file.

The MtoA Installer works like this:

  • Installs make a backup of the existing Maya.env, and then append the environment settings to the existing Maya.env.
  • Uninstalls restore the backup version of Maya.env.

So if your Maya.env already has MtoA settings for MAYA_RENDER_DESC_PATH and PATH settings, then when you install another MtoA, you end up with a problem (because the new settings will be at the bottom, where they are ignored).

Ok, so that’s problem solved. Just remove those extra entries from Maya.env.