Grey Screen Problem

[Tim_LIVID]

This is a strange problem that I have not come across before. When I press 'space' to go into the 4 view and then click in the persp view and press 'space' all I see is a grey screen. I can't see my model, no grid ... nothing.

The only way I have found to solve this problem is to quit and re-start Maya.

Please help if you can

_LIVID

[NitroLiq]

Have you checked to see if you're just zoomed waaaaay out in the persp view? Try selecting your model in one of the orthographic views, then go to persp view and press the "a" or "f" key and see if your object and grid show up again.

[Tim_LIVID]

I've tried that. The weird thing is that when it is in the 4 view mode there all look there and normal but when I go into persp I get nothing.

_LIVID

[ragecgi]

2 things:

1. What vid card are you using?
(I use a GeForce card, and this happens all the time because it is not qualified for Maya, however, I've written a workaround-script to cope with it in a nano-sceond:)

2. When this happens, Deselect everything, then IN YOUR OUTLINER select something and click any tool in the toolbox.
Does the viewport appear then?

[^^TwEeK^^]

hey rage...
i just installed maya on my new computer and this is happening to me too.....
i have geforce ti4200.....do you mind uploading the script or something?

[Tim_LIVID]

I have a GeForce card and if Tweek is having the same problem then I guess we have the answer.

_LIVID

[NitroLiq]

If you have a 4200, you might want to think of Soft quadro-ing it up. Do a search for softquadro or softquadro on you should find some info and links to it. It solved alot of my consumer card/maya issues. It basically patches your drivers to turn your card into a Quadro 750XGL card.

[^^TwEeK^^]

i tried doing it once....but it got pretty complicated and i couldnt get it to work......

[dave_baer]

I get it too occasionally. Sounds like a video / RAM issue. When that starts to happen to me I shut down Maya and restart it. What's happening is that all the memory cache being stored by Maya is building up more and more and starts to bog down the system. By restarting Maya you clear the cache and free up needed memory.

But then it could be those little green things I found clinging to the bottom of the video card. Damn things bleed when you poke them with a needle. eww! :D

[Tim_LIVID]

I tried re-starting Maya but is still does it?!

_LIVID

[dave_baer]

System specs please.

[Vampus]

I've had the same problems, but they've have only just started to appear. I have a P4 2.4Ghz, 512MB RAM, GForce4 MMX 440 and running XP. I got the problem within 10 minutes of opening maya.

[mtmckinley]

I also have the difficulty. I'm thinking it's due to the latest GeForce drivers.

[Tim_LIVID]

Im running

P4 2.4G
1024MB RAM
DirectX 9.0b
GeForce4 Ti 4200

_LIVID

[dave_baer]

Originally posted by mtmckinley
I also have the difficulty. I'm thinking it's due to the latest GeForce drivers.

Not knowing much about the GeForce cards myself, I'd have to go with Mike's reasoning. Your ram and video look up to par, so it might be the drivers.

[NitroLiq]

My advice would be to look into soft quadroing your card, as I mentioned earlier:

http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/softquadro/

Or peruse some of the forums there. You'll find more info about the various drivers than you'll ever need to know. I don't even bother to upgrade my drivers....I think I'm using 39 or 42 or something.

[rich]

Originally posted by Tim_LIVID
This is a strange problem that I have not come across before. When I press 'space' to go into the 4 view and then click in the persp view and press 'space' all I see is a grey screen. I can't see my model, no grid ... nothing.

The only way I have found to solve this problem is to quit and re-start Maya.

Please help if you can

_LIVID

I may have found a good solution to this problem:

On your desktop right-click the Maya shortcut and select "Windows 2000" compatibility mode.

Also, I am running my GeForce FX5700-256 in dualview mode not Horizontal Span (as is often recommended)

[mtmckinley]

I think that only works in WinXP.

[Vampus]

I have PLE, and I don't have that feature.

[Tim_LIVID]

See I selected Windows 2000 compatibility mode and I have XP, but the problem is still there. Im going to try soft quadroing to see if that has an effect.

_LIVID

[dannyngan]

Not sure if this will help or not. There is a similar thread on here regarding display problems and Nvidia drivers:

http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9854

I have a workaround going in the form of a MEL script. You can get it in that thread or directly from my website:

http://www.dannyngan.com/tools.htm

[IdanBis]

I'm having the same problem myslef !

My Spec:
Windows Xp SP1
Mem: 512M RAM
GeforceFX 5200, ASUS (v9520), 128M DDR
Maya 5 (also upgraded to 5.0.1 - didn't work either).

@dannyngan - that MEL script didn't work for me :(
I also seems that the bug is also causing the top window title bar to be un-drawn as-well (after 20-30 minutes of use).

@Huxley - that "Windows 2000 compatibility mode" didn't work for me either.

Note: before I have upgraded my display adpater, i had GeForce2 MX 440 64M & it's worked fine, so it is indeed strange now on Geforce 5 (FX) it doesn't work... :(

Plz. help solving this issue.

[neoarcadia]

I have this exact same problem. If i use any driver passed the 44.03 drivers (i BELIEVE.. could be earlier).. this happens, and i end up re-installing the older drivers.. Then revert back to the 53.03 for playing the latest games n such. Not a great solution, but im still searching for a better one ;)

[Tim_LIVID]

Looks like I have just highlighted a problem most of us have been having. Why is therer no sure solution or patch to solve it?

_LIVID

[rich]

Well, I started thinking "conspiracy theory"... maybe nVidia allow the problem to persist so that they can keep sales of their high-end cards going. Then I realised that this was codswallop...

I downloaded their release-notes for 53.03 drivers and sure enough they do address Maya 5.0 issues with the GeForce cards as they solved an issue: "Hardware Render shadows are drawn as squares instead of circles". But the viewport refresh problem is not mentioned; even in their list of unresolved issues.

So I think that we should start hounding them about it. All us FX5700 owners should send emails to the manafacturers of our respective cards and draw attention to the problem.

Here's some support email addresses for some of the big companies....

Leadtek: support@leadtek.com
Prolink/Pixelview: tec@prolink-usa.com

Pny: I had no luck finding a support address for them, if you know, please let me know.

Abit: technical@abit-usa.com

Albatron: support@albatronusa.com

Asus: tsd@asus.com

Gainward: support@gainwardusa.com

MSI: Again no luck with an email addy - you can go to MSI.com and submit a request by form

I've already sent an email to Pro-Link and would encourage you to do the same.

[Tim_LIVID]

Now that's what I call pro-active :D

_LIVID

[rich]

Here's a copy of my email to Prolink:




Hi,

I recently bought a PixelView GeForce FX5700 and am very happy with the card except for one problem:

I use Alias’ Maya 5.0 Unlimited on my system and I find that with the FX5700, I get a viewport refresh problem whenever I switch to and from viewport mode (pressing the spacebar). This seems to be a common problem as there have been many mentions in various Maya related bulletin boards (I’ve included some links to forum threads for you to take a look at).

I reviewed the release notes for the driver release 53.03 but there is no mention of this issue. The only solution that seems to work for some users is to roll-back their drivers to version 44.03 which, although seems to resolve the viewport problems, has a negative impact on performance.

I hope that you could provide some assistance or pointers.

Forum threads

http://www.cgtalk.com/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=979215&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending
http://www.cgchannel.com/forum/viewthread?thread=4396
http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9854&highlight=5700

My system specifications

Motherboard: ABIT IC7-Max3
Processor: Intel P-IVc 3.2GHz
Memory: 4xSamsung 512MB PC3200 unregistered
GFX/Accel: PixelView GeForce FX5700-256Mb (driver ver: 53.03)
O/S: Windows XP-Pro SP1
HDD: 2xSeagate 120GB SATA RAID-0 (Intel ICHR-5 controller)

Sincerely,

[IdanBis]

I've sent similar letter to ASUS (tsd@asus.com).
If I will have any response i will post it here.

[rich]

I got a reply from Pro-Link US... they forwarded the mail to their head-office in Taiwan.

[rich]

An update... I received an email from the tech team in Taiwan. They suggested that I flash upgrade my system BIOS to the latest version and disable AGP Fast Write in my BIOS settings.

I have done both of these but it doesn't fix the problem. I replied to them so lets see where this goes from here.

[cracker]

bit of shame

might have to revert back to the older driver

[Tim_LIVID]

Strange, who would have thought this problem would be so hard to fix :-S

_LIVID

[IdanBis]

Found also a bug, regarding the GeForceFX (Nvidia) - only in adddition to the common gray screen problem when switching views, found it is also causing the entire maya display to act strangely (dialogs are suddenly not painting correctly), till after some time of usage the application closes (suddenly, without any error), and then if you check the display driver, you suddenly see the driver is there, BUT the colors depth has decreased to 4bit (where it was on 32bit), and the resolution is fixed to: 640x480 (though the display does not change and stays on 1024x768) - and on BOTH cases, you cannot change these settings, unless you do a reboot to the computer :-(

Btw, i still DIDN'T receive any response from the ASUS Technical Supoort, except for the auto-response email, though it has been over 1 week since i've sent that.
My guess is either no one wants to help, or this is indeed some sort of a "conspiracy" between Nvidia & AliasWaveFront, that only those who will buy the Quadro cards will be able to run this software (though both cards are capable to do so, and it's only a matter of driver)...

[rich]

I finally got my Quadro 980XGL back from the vendor yesterday and hungrily reinstalled it with the 53.03 drivers .... ahhhh sweet relief!!!! No more viewport problems! :)

[soulcialism]

i think i'm having the same issue as everyone else - i found 2 workarounds in maya to save the trouble of having to change drivers every time you want to do something other than model... this is for my geforce4 ti4200...

1) instead of spacebarring to get to persp, use the hotkey layouts on the left side, in the toolbox. might have to enable that if you have it turned off though...display > ui elements > toolbox

2) if you insist on spacebarring, spacebar to the grey screen, make sure your object is deselected (just l-click once or whatever), then rclick->select all. it'll frame and select your object and it'll be visible again.

both of these work on my machine, would someone else like to try them on their machine and see if it seems like a good workaround or is it just a fluke for me

[Co0KiEmAn]

I am running Maya 5.0 Unlimited on a Radeon 9700 Pro with the Catalyst 3.9 drivers and I have a similar problem, if not the same. Which leads me to believe that the problem is not exclusive to Nvidia cards.

If I create a new scene and re-open my previous scene, the problem goes away...

[mtmckinley]

what you're seeing is what happends sometimes when dealing with alpha transparancy. A different issue, I believe.

EDIT: Cool model, by the way. :)

[roach105]

Hey guys just quickly on graphic issues. Please remember that most 3d software is written to work with open GL only not Direct x and I think this is the main issue. lower end cards like GeForce and Radeons are made more for gaming which fully supports DirectX while the highend cards Support Open GL. just my 0.02 cents.

[IdanBis]

Originally posted by roach105
lower end cards like GeForce and Radeons are made more for gaming which fully supports DirectX while the highend cards Support Open GL.

I must say i disagree with that ruling, as both cards, imho, use the open GL & support it, i might even add FAIRLY (!), as well as DirectX. :rolleyes:
I wouldn't consider "GeForce" cards so "low end" (at least not all of them), afterall, we are also talking about models such as 5200 (for me) & 5700 - type of GeForceFX (5) with 128M DDR AGPX8 - which are pretty much good cards.

Furthermore, as noted by others, when you roll-back to older driver versions (such as 44) this work with maya with no problem, therefore it must be a "driver issue" and nothing more than that. :confused:
The problem that if you roll-back to such older version of the driver, you won't be able to do anything except for using maya.

I'm still waiting for a patch from either AliasWaveFront/Nvidia that will keep me happy with boths "goals": performance (for gams) + maya "fair" usage.
Note: don't mind if some display within maya will not be that high-end (for GeForce), as long as it will render ok - but switch between views is something too basic & important in the everyday work to be able to look away & live without... :( :mad:

[roach105]

IdanBis My intent was not to bash the Geforce cards as low end cards. They are deffinetly not loe end or crap cards at all. I use a radeon 9800 and have a few issues on with Maya. So, I do apologize if anyone got offended. The above issues do seem to driver issues. Also what I meant to say in regards to Open GL. Is that even though both types of cards support OGL it still comes down to manufactures driver support for the particular model ans this is why the Quadro FX and Fire GL's have better support in high end applications such as Maya. Please correct me if I am incorrect.

[IdanBis]

Originally posted by roach105
So, I do apologize if anyone got offended.
None taken ;)

Just a bit frustrated from this issue, sorry if that sounded like I was attacking you... :o

[roach105]

I have the Radeon 9800 and have a crap load of issues while in Maya. Than my other desktop has Quadro FX 2000 and works perfectly in Maya. Your right it is very frustrating when you dont see your stuff properly in the viewport or get mouse trails everywhere. totally sucks. My recommendation find a older drv that works and stick with it!

[Tim_LIVID]

The plot thinkens!

_LIVID

[thoughtcrime]

THis happens all the time, its annoying. I kinda skimmed through the posts so im not sure if this was suggested, but what i do is toggle something in the screen. Usually the channel box (cntl a) and that works.