FAQ

What it does to your scene, what happens to a pass downstream, and what it deliberately does not do.

Does it change my existing materials?

No. It creates its own shaders and only ever edits, renames or deletes shaders carrying its own tag. Default materials (lambert1, standardSurface1, …), referenced nodes and locked nodes are refused outright, everywhere in the tool.

The one exception is one you ask for: Adopt Materials tags materials that already exist so the list can manage them. It asks first and lists what it is about to adopt, and it changes nothing but the tag.

What happens when I save the scene?

Nothing special — the landmarks are Maya shaders and shading assignments, so they are saved exactly like any other shading in the file. Reopening the scene without this tool installed gives you shaders with four extra attributes and a normal assignment.

Can I use it on a referenced rig?

Yes, for assigning: shading assignments to referenced geometry work the way they always do in Maya, and are stored as reference edits.

Referenced shaders are never modified — if the landmarks themselves came in through a reference, the tool will not rename, recolour or delete them.

Will it work in batch?

Yes. Am_landmark.core never imports Qt, so mayapy with maya.standalone initialised can load a pass, mirror it, bake it and save the scene with no window involved. See Scripting → Running head-less.

How many landmarks can I have?

No limit is imposed. The list is comfortable into the hundreds; assignments and selections are chunked so a landmark wearing 100 000 faces is a handful of Maya commands rather than 100 000.

Does the pass survive a retopology?

If you saved it with samples, yes — load it back by UV if the new mesh shares the UV layout, or by Position if it does not but is roughly the same shape.

If you saved face ids only, the pass belongs to the topology it was made on.

Can two people mark up the same model?

Yes: each saves their own file, and both load the other's. Loading is additive — it creates the landmarks that are missing and re-applies their faces, leaving everything else alone.

Use Overwrite colours of existing landmarks → off if you want the scene's colours to win when a name appears in both.

Can I get the marks out to a game engine / another package?

Bake Vertex Colours (Utilities) writes each landmark's colour into the mesh's vertex colours, which travel through Alembic, FBX and every engine.

Coming back the other way works too: load the pass with Match faces by → Colour Set and geometry that returns carrying only vertex colours becomes landmarks again.

Is a landmark a selection set?

No. Sets are invisible in the viewport, which defeats the purpose. If you want a set as well, select the faces (Select Faces) and make one — they are independent.

Can a face have two landmarks?

No, and not because of this tool: a face has exactly one shading assignment in Maya. Assigning a second landmark to it moves it. Use groups if you need a second axis of organisation — a landmark can be in one group and mean several things.

Why are my landmarks flat and unshaded?

Because the default type is surfaceShader, which ignores lighting so the viewport colour is exactly the colour you picked. If you want them lit, convert them to lambert or blinn — the assignment survives.

Can I share it, or use it on several computers?

A licence covers one person, on every computer that person uses. Each other person who uses the tool, including colleagues in a studio, needs their own licence. Copying, sharing, uploading or reselling the tool is prohibited; LICENSE.txt in your download has the full terms. Your scenes and landmark files are yours to share with anyone.

Does it support UDIMs / multiple UV sets?

UV matching reads face centres in one UV set — the current one at save time, recorded in the file. Face centres in a UDIM layout are still unique per face, so matching works; what it cannot do is match across two meshes whose UV layouts differ.

If a mesh has several UV sets, make the one you want current before saving.

What about NURBS or subdivision surfaces?

Not supported. Landmarks are per polygon face; there is nothing to assign to on a NURBS surface. Convert to polygons, or assign the shader to the whole object by hand in Maya.

Can I change the accent colour / restyle the window?

Yes — ui/styles.py holds every colour and QSS fragment in one place, and ui/branding.py holds the mark (change MARK and the caption bar, the window icon and every exported PNG follow). The package's own README.md covers extending the window itself: adding a page is one entry in PAGES and one method.

Where do I report a problem?

With the status-bar message and the traceback from Maya's script editor. Both say more than a description of what happened, and the tool is built so that a failure leaves the scene in the state it was in before you pressed the button.