for the moment I’m only able to reproduce one situation step by step, other situations are a bit random but I’ll try to describe.
I’m using Maya 2011 x64 on WindowsXP x64.
I have 4Gb of RAM and I never used more than 3Gb during this test.

Steps:
- Create an nparticle emitter
- Create an instancer with more than one object instanced (I used 6 objects)
- Add a custom per particle float attribute to nParticleShape1 (I named it “index")
- Create the expression “nParticleShape1.index = id%6”
- Under “nParticleShape1>Instancer>General Options” assign the attr “index” to “Object Index”
(Now I’m emitting multiple objects. I don’t know any other way to do this except using a rand instead of %)
- Make an ncache of the particles with the default settings (one file per frame, eval every 1 frame and save every 1 eval. I’m caching from frame 1 to 24 and the start frame of nucleus is 1 by default)
- Attach the outliner to the main window.
- Save the scene, restart maya and load again.
- If you saved the scene with the time slider on the start frame of nucleus, it will crash with a fatal error. If not, it will crash when you put the time slider on the start frame of nucleus.

If I don’t ncache the start frame of nucleus it won’t crash BUT, another way to make it crash is to render this with mental ray and high values of motion blur, even if you don’t ncache the start frame of nucleus.

Another problem is that when I reopen the scene, I won`t see the instanced geometry on the particles until I place the time slider on the start frame of nucleus.

I hope that someone from Autodesk can answer these questions or give a workaround solution.
Thanks in advance.

thnkr.com bug ID: 0000380

I’ve been making a lot of tests and finally I’ve discovered that all this is only reproducible if I save the scene with the outliner window attached to the left side of the viewport :S

	Attachment

I’ve attached a sample file. Can you confirm that that crashes your copy of Maya. It doesn’t for me.

I tried with a clean install of SP1 and still crashes :(
As I can see in the attached bug_0000380.ma file, you tested it on Mac OS, but the crash is on windows xp, so maybe that is the difference.

Same problem here, with Maya2011 SP1, on Windows Seven 64 bit.

All you need to make maya crash, is to instance some geometry on particles, save the scene, then load that scene.

My timeline begins at frame 0, I have no nParticle cache.
There is an expression that sets the object index.

There are 2 workarounds :
-Before saving the scene, hide the Outliner (as explained in previous messages).
-Before saving the scene, hide the instancer node.

EDIT : It seems this bug has been logged, I hope it will be fixed soon :
http://bugs.thnkr.com/view.php?id=380

Anybody tried it on Maya2012 ?

Any news on this bug ?
I would like to know if it’s fixed on Maya2012.

Thanks.

I tested it today, this bug is still active in Maya2012 SAP (released on september 27th 2011).
Any comment from Autodesk, please ?