General question: Maya & fatal errors

What graphics card are you using? Maya is notoriously picky. It even tends to exhibit errors on 'officially qualified' cards.

The situation you're describing is one of the worst I've heard about--but it's not unheard of, if you follow me. I agree, it's pretty disappointing and frustrating. My perception is that the big studios have top-notch hardware and higher-level support from Autodesk; the rest of us are left to limp along as best we can.

-Steve

I'm afraid I don't have nearly enough technical knowledge to have any certainty about the issue; take my comments with a healthy dose of salt.

That being said, everything you do in Maya's interface utilizes the GPU to some extent.

Even just selecting objects usually invokes pre-selection highlighting these days, which requires the GPU to draw in those temporary overlays (the 'ghostly' version of the edge loop you are about to cut in, for example). The performance of these visual cues reminds me of the artisan brush interface (red circle aligned to the surface you're painting), which I know has often in the past exhibited problems with unqualified video cards.

I don't think that's related to the poly split tool sometimes not splitting... I have that experience myself, and I'm not sure of the cause. I suspect it has something to do with the topology of the polys in question, possibly in combination with the angle you happen to be viewing it at (there's the GPU again, so maybe it's related after all...).

All this being said, a few years ago I experimented with a few different video cards, shamelessly abusing a retailer's lenient return policy. I tried a GeForce, a Radeon, and a Fire GL (the only one officially approved by Autodesk). All three had problems--yes, including the Fire GL, which also came with weaker performance in other applications (= games, ahem)... and all this at more than twice the price of the others! My relationship to Maya's hardware requirements since then has been one of barely-suppressed resentment and loathing. They clearly have zero interest in supporting smaller indie artists; they only seem to care about large studios with gold support contracts and high-level tech support. The rest of us have to make do and find workarounds.

Sorry I don't have better news for you!

-Steve

[Ben van Hamelen] "I didn't know Maya leaned on the GPU this heavily with simple operations like split."

Well, I don't think it needs to 'lean heavily' on it in order for it to crash. I'm not saying the GPU is necessary for Maya to perform the split calculation--I'm sure it isn't--but as part of what's happening in the interface the GPU does need to calculate the results, just to show them to you. If that causes a crash, then that causes a crash--even if it was some procedure entirely secondary to the actual poly split calculation that did it, you know?

A possible workaround for really damaged topology is to simply delete the problematic face and then use Poly Append to build it back in in pieces rather than trying to split it. Sounds like you've mostly gotten past the issue anyway, though.

-Steve