Troubleshooting¶
Symptom first. Find what you are seeing.
Nothing happens when I click a shape¶
The most common problem in the whole tool, and nearly always the namespace.
- Is the rig in the scene? A picker cannot select what is not there.
- Right-click → Set Namespace… and read the count. 0 of 21 objects found means the picker is looking in the wrong place — use the eyedropper on any control of the right rig. Full page
- Are you in Anim mode? The bottom-right corner says. In Edit mode a click selects the shape, not the control.
- Is the item bound? Ask whoever built the picker. In Edit mode, select the item and press I — an empty Object field means it is bound to nothing.
Some items select, others do not¶
The rig changed after the picker was built. Open Set Namespace and read the not found list — those are your broken bindings.
A rigger can fix them by rebinding; an animator should send that list to whoever owns the picker.
The Delete key does not remove items¶
Maya sometimes takes Del before Qt sees it.
- Click empty canvas once so it has focus, and make sure you are not in a text field
- Confirm you are in Edit mode
- Or delete from the Picker Outliner, which is not affected
A keyboard shortcut does nothing¶
The picker needs focus. Am_Picker binds nothing in Maya itself — every shortcut only exists while a picker window has keyboard focus. Click the picker first.
Check the mode. Most shortcuts are Edit-mode only.
Check your keymap. Preferences → Keyboard, or the Quick start help panel, which shows your keys rather than the defaults.
I opens Picker Behavior, not Quick start help. Both ship on that key and the canvas gets it first. Quick start help is in the Window menu.
A new item does not appear¶
It was created on a hidden layer — the canvas says so when this happens. Open the Picker Outliner, turn the layer back on, or move the item.
New items join the layer selected in the Outliner, which is a preference you can turn off.
A big shape swallows clicks meant for buttons on top of it¶
Two fixes, both in the Channel Box:
- Turn Drag Selection on and normal selection off, so it can only be caught by a marquee
- Or lower its Z depth so it sits behind the buttons
If it is decoration rather than a control, it should be a mute shape instead — those are invisible to clicks by design.
The window is a different size for other people¶
The canvas size is the canvas. A docked channel box adds its own width on top of it.
If you built with the channel box docked, undock it and check the layout at the size an animator will actually get.
Undo undid the wrong thing¶
Edit mode has its own undo stack, separate from Maya's. Ctrl+Z with the picker focused undoes in the picker; with the viewport focused it undoes in Maya. Click the thing you meant to undo in, first.
Images are missing after sending a picker to somebody¶
The .ampkr was exported without packing images, so it references them by
path and those paths do not resolve on their machine.
Re-export with Pack images into the file ticked. More
I cannot save — the picker node is referenced¶
Maya will not let anything write to a referenced node. This is normal for a picker built into a rig.
The picker still works; the namespace assignment just holds for the session rather than being saved. To change such a picker, edit it in the rig file and republish.
A shape I added to the shape library is gone¶
The library folder is not writable — some studio installs put Am_Picker somewhere read-only, and saving a library entry can fail without telling you.
Install to your user folder rather than a shared network location, or ask for write access to the install.
The picker is out of step with the scene¶
Press F5 — Refresh — which rebuilds the window from the data node. Use it after reloading a rig, swapping a reference, or changing a namespace outside the picker's knowledge.
Tracing produces a thousand-vertex blob¶
You are tracing too much at once. In Image to Picker, erase everything but one region, lower the Edge slider, and lower the anchor count in Shape output. Trace region by region.
If you have a vector version of the artwork, use Vector to Picker instead — it is better output for less work.
Am_Picker will not import¶
The package is not on Maya's Python path.
- Re-run the installer with Register the AM_Tools module ticked, and restart Maya once
- Or add
<AM_Tools root>/scriptstoPYTHONPATHyourself - Or install by hand into
<Documents>/maya/scripts/Am_picker/
Something else¶
Check the Script Editor. Am_Picker prints real tracebacks rather than swallowing errors, so whatever went wrong usually says so — and that output is the single most useful thing to include in a bug report.