Sep 2009
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Sep 2009
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farbtopf
Sep '09
  Hia



  target node will not allow connection, (-refering to attaching a shader to an object) that's the error message that has kept me up for the past nights.


 It pops up every time I have to tweak render layers

on a referenced file. It then jumbles up all the shaders and makes a
mess, the only sollution seems to be to redo my render file. 

  I’m using maya 2008

on a mac and needless to say this is driving me crazy, I’ve got a
project running with around 80 shots, while each shot has multiple
render files. 

  If anyone has any idea how to fix this please let me know



  thanks in advance.

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    Sep '09

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    Sep '09
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drblacksnake
Sep '09

i am not in front of maya, so i cannot check, however as far as i remember, referenced nodes nodes are read-only.. in this case you can duplicate-with-connections-to-shading-network the main shader node.. this node will not be read-only, which is what you want, i guess.

jonathancking
Sep '09

this is a well-known bug in maya's render layer management, and has not yet been resolved as far as I know.  I have had several scenes go through this problem -- suddenly the render layers stop working correctly, target nodes will not allow connection, and a bunch of objects lose their shading group association altogether.  To this day, because of this error, I still go the old-fashioned route and break out individual Maya files for render layers.  If everything in your scene is referenced in other files, and you make shader changes to those references in each render layer file you create, you should have no problems.

The other solution that has worked well for me in the past is to write a MEL script that toggles back and forth through different render layer set ups.  To get you started, these lines will select all polys, subdivs, and nurbs and assign a specific shader to them:

select ls -typ nurbsSurface -typ mesh -typ subdiv;
hyperShade -assign shadingGroupNameSG;

You can use this same kind of code to change attributes on lights or shaders, or hide geometry as needed (setAttr command).

I find that for big projects this is more reliable than hoping render layers will not fail.  It seems overwhelming at first, but I've gotten used to breaking out lots and lots of files.  My last major project had 40 shots, approximately 6 render layers per shot, for a grand total of about 240 Maya files.

JCK

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