launchers

launchers

Custom scripts to launch Maya with a specific configuration.

Introduction

What does it mean ?

That you don't launch Maya using the default Windows shortcut, or by clicking on a Maya file. You do it via a custom launcher.

What is the advantage ?

You can configure maya exactly how you want it for a specific session. You want Arnold in one session and Redshift in another, you can just create 2 launchers to have 2 different Maya configurations.

How does it work ?

Usually it's just setting environment variables. To know which one to edit is usually specified in the documentation.

In that repository, we also execute some python code at startup to configure even more Maya.

Execution diagram :

"launcher.Maya-2023.env-default.sh"
∣ setup environment variables
∣ start maya
↳    "startup/userSetup.py"
     ∣ override python logger
     ∣ setup preferences
     ↳    "env-default/userPrefs.py"
          # personal preferences to toggle
     ∣ setup plugins
     ↳    "env-default/pluginPrefs.mel"
          # plugin autoloading

how-to-use

You launch maya by executing one of the .sh scripts or its .bat variant for Windows.

executing shell scripts

.sh is the extension for bash shell scripts. On Linux you can run them easily, but not directly on Windows. A quick Google search should inform you at how to achieve that.

I developed them using Git BASH on Windows 10.

how-to-configure

You can create new "env" depending on your needs. Just duplicate the env-default folder and edit it's content.

You can then do the same for the .sh script. Duplicate the default and then edit its content, so it points to the env you just duplicated (just edit the LXM_MAYA_ENV_DIR environment variable).

logic

plugins

Loading of plugins is performed via a "hack". We fully override autoloading of plugins from the user preferences.

The autoloading of plugins is stored in the pluginPrefs.mel file, located in the user preferences. At start-up we replace this file by a pre-defined one, which maya will read just fine.

The only issue is if you don't have any user preferences yet, because it's the first time you are launching maya on your machine, or if it is the first time maya is launched for the given user preferences location. In that case the hack will not work on the first time, and you will need to restart maya righ after. (This is suggested to the user via a small dialog)

structure

startup/

Agnostic files. Can be launched for any version and any configuration. Registered in PYTHONPATH.

prefs/

Where user maya preferences are stored. This is an example, but they could be set anywhere, or not even set, and you could use the default ones.

env-XXX

Interchangeable directory to "customize" maya behavior. Set via LXM_MAYA_ENV_DIR and then used in startup/userSetup.py.

You can find an example with the env-default directory.