Unique object names

[brue]

Jimstar,

Is there any way we could get around this on export ? Trying to design a pipeline and this is hampering a lot of efforts in IPR rendering.

[JimStar]

Jimstar,

Is there any way we could get around this on export ? Trying to design a pipeline and this is hampering a lot of efforts in IPR rendering.

Could you clarify some more detailed what you mean?

[brue]

On rendering a scene octane won't render any object with a duplicated object name.

[JimStar]

On rendering a scene octane won't render any object with a duplicated object name.

Yes, and it is normal. You will get a lot more troubles during rendering if this check will not exist. It was made intentionally some time ago, to eliminate these troubles.
It's a pity that Maya does not have the object's "Unique ID" mechanism in its API, so only the names of objects can be used for this purpose...

[brue]

maya native, mental ray, and vray deal with it. Given say the duplication of file names when groups, or parented objects are duplicated, what ID are they calling against?

One could make the argument for handling it in a pre- render maya mel script. However in this particular scene with over 10,000 objects, it's an issue. Not to mention that it makes IPR unusable.

Not to be argumentative but this is a bit of a wrench for me.

[brue]

Jimstar, how about using the DAG path instead of just the DAG name ?

[JimStar]

Jimstar, how about using the DAG path instead of just the DAG name ?

I thought about it... This approach will have a big speed impact (and memory too, but it is not so important as speed). As this string ("name" or "path") should be used as unique index in time-critical objects database - the longer the string, the slower the initial scene translation, live-update during IPR, and live-animation (especially in the case of multiple different objects at the end of the same long path, as on the simple illustration).
It would be ideal from the point of view of speed if there was a 32-bit unique identifier for each object, but Maya API does not have it...

You can use the special button on the Octane toolshelf which changes all names to unique.

[Doodle_Monkey]

I don't know if this will help your workflow. I have been having problems with this "unique" name thing too. It's a pain. The button in the Octane Shelf Tab doesn't seem to fix it either. It changes the name, but still calls it out as being a duplicate at export.

If you are under a crunch and you don't want to spend the time to debug the naming issue.

1. Select all the objects in your scene or object suspect of having duplicates
2. Combine
3. Separate (if you want to still move elements individually)

This forces Maya to rename everything automatically. It's worked for me and maintains my sanity.

[brue]

Jimstar,

How about using a hash of the dag path, instead of the full string ? Just a thought.

[JimStar]

Jimstar,

How about using a hash of the dag path, instead of the full string ? Just a thought.

Just relax and accept the lack of ideal world... The hash calculate during every string insertion and search will eat even more resources than just direct string compare (and you will get collisions as additional problem, and will complain for bugs when some objects will be mixed up).
The Maya plugin users have to decide what they want more: the convenience of "not thinking about duplicate names", or more speed during complex frames translation. Unfortunately, you can't have both in Maya (at least in current versions with lack of unique IDs for objects). E.g. this problem does not exist for Blender plugin, but not for Maya...
If speed is less important than objects duplicated naming convenience - I can change the algorythms to indexing the objects by path (the speed difference will be noticeable on complex frames only). Perhaps some voting is needed?..