Autodesk Maya is a great piece of 3D modeling software, but it's not free of bugs and annoying errors that could poison lives of fellow 3D artists. For example, one of the common errors in Maya is disappeared RenderView menu buttons, also known as "empty renderview window", "blank renderview" or "renderview not found" syndrome. Fortunately, the "setParent: object ‘renderView’ not found" error can be fixed in a quick and easy way.

In the Beginning There Was a Render View

So, you have a Maya scene file and want to render it using Render View window. You try to bring it up or just straight hit the "Render the current frame" menu button to get a render of current Maya scene and... Whoops! Something goes wrong. You got the following error message:



Error: setParent: object ‘renderView’ not found



Exact reason of why this is happening is unknown to me. It looks like Maya in rare cases stores incorrect data of its window positions and layout in one of the settings file. This files are stored in user's Documents folder, so one way to fix this issue is to clear Maya Preferences by deleting corresponding files or the whole prefs folder. Still, it's just a one way, and probably not the best one — you will loose all of Maya settings after doing so. It is better to use another, much less destructive approach.

Three Ways To Fix RenderView Not Found Error

First, to get rid of missing RenderView error you can take a solution suggested here, and execute a simple Maya script. This will return RenderView to its rightful place. Open up Script Editor and paste into it the following code:

$exists=0; for ($item in `getPanel -scriptType "renderWindowPanel"`) { if ( $item == "renderView" ) { print "renderView exists.

"; $exists=1; } } if ( $exists == 0 ) { for ($item in `getPanel -scriptType "renderWindowPanel"`) { //print ( $item + "

"); if ( $item == "renderWindowPanel1" ) { deleteUI renderWindowPanel1; $renderPanel = `scriptedPanel -type "renderWindowPanel" -unParent renderView`; scriptedPanel -e -label `interToUI $renderPanel` $renderPanel; } } }

Execute the script.

Now it's a perfect time to save our script to the Shelf for future use. In Script Editor go to File--> Save Script to Shelf and specify desired shelf button name — for example, something like RVFix. Keep in mind that button will be created in active Shelf tab, so prior to saving you may want to select approriate shelf tab to store your script. Now, whenever you run up into this error you can simply use your shelf button and get your RenderView back on where it supposed to be.

Second, this error happens only when you open Maya scenes by double-clicking on them (thanks to the guys in comments for figuring this out!). So, to prevent "RenderView not found" error just don't do that and open scenes through Maya menu "File — Open Scene", and that should do the trick.

Third, looks like Autodesk fixed this error in latest updates to Maya 2012, so try to install Maya 2012 Service Pack 1 (or later Maya version) and evaluate if the error is gone.

That's it, now you should have an ability to fix your issues with missing renderview, one way or another.