Maya and WB

Wednesday, November 30, 2005 by Kevin Quaid | Discussion: WindowBlinds


I haven't been able to use Windowblinds in a long time because I mainly use Maya on my machine, and they don't work together well at all.

Even the most recent version of Maya has to be run in 'compadibility mode' for win2k in order for all of the features to work correctly. But when it is in that mode, Windowblinds slows it down a ton. Starting up takes 10 times as long, and working in any of the windows takes seconds to redraw the scene, when usually it updates like 40 times a second.

I know the first thing people are going to suggest: use the WB application specific setting. None of them help. Even if I have WB completely ignore the program, it is still that slow. I have tried all the combinations in every version of WB when it came out, but it was no better.

Is there something else I can do? I really want to use Windowblinds, but I can't!

Thanks!
7 Reply 3 Referrals
Neil Banfield
Reply #1 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 4:38 PM

If you do not exclude the app, does WB skin anything?

Also when not in compatibility mode, does the app skin & work at normal speed?


Kevin Quaid
Reply #2 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 6:15 PM
If I don't exclude it, it skins the app but it is still really slow.

When I turn off compatibility mode, it works just as fast as without WB.

But unfortunately I have to be in compatibility mode to work, and no matter what I try WindowBlinds doesn't like that.

Is there anything else that can be done?

Thanks!

Frogboy
Reply #3 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 6:54 PM
That's odd.  I'm not sure if you know this but Stardock's a "Maya shop" (https://www.galciv2.com) and we don't have any problems with Maya on XP. What version of Maya you using?

Kevin Quaid
Reply #4 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 7:00 PM
The problem is in Maya 6, 6.5 and 7 in XP. You don't see it unless you turn on compatibility mode for Maya. Otherwise, the Maya window can freeze and turn white while doing some functions with the video card buffers. It's a known problem with XP, which is why Alias always suggests win2k mode.

Neil Banfield
Reply #5 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 7:42 PM

Ahh, well we have a fix for that in WB.

Open the file wb.ini in the Windows (NOT WB) directory.  If it does not exist then you will need to create it.

Add the following :

[Global]

NoGhostSupport = 1

This will prevent any app from 'ghosting' when it stops responding, so you will be able to run Maya in XP mode.  I should point out that their app should not stop responding for such long periods of time.  Suggesting people use 2000 mode is not a solution!


Kevin Quaid
Reply #6 Thursday, December 1, 2005 4:23 PM
Oooh, I think that did it! I'll have to test it on my other machine, but now it works great on this one!

Thanks!


(Oh, Alias just blames Microsoft for writing bad code. That particular bug has been in their code for years now.)

Neil Banfield
Reply #7 Thursday, December 1, 2005 4:51 PM

The reason maya turns white is because their app fails to process messages for more than a set amount of time.  XP decides the app is hung and so turns it into a ghost window so users can move, size & kill it easily.

As it happens it can be turned off per process (by the app itself) if it causes a real problem, but in general if you have to turn it off then your app needs fixing.


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