If you encounter errors while using the plug-in, please report them to us through the contact form found inside the customer portal or in the Maya section of the forum. To help us identify and fix the problem quickly, please provide as much information as possible:

What operating system and Maya version are you using?
If a feature works in a different way than you expected, what was the expected result?
Is the problem repeatable? If yes, which are the steps leading to it?
Is it possible to reproduce the problem in a simple scene created from scratch, or is it only happening in a specific scene? If a specific scene triggers it, please send us the file. Everything you send will be confidential and we will delete the files after we are done investigating the problem.
Attach screenshots, screencasts and/or renders demonstrating the problem, where possible.
Do you have any other plug-ins installed? Does the problem still occur if you disable those plug-ins?
Do you see any messages from the Maxwell plug-in in the script editor window when the error occurs?

Always make sure you have the latest plug-in and Maxwell build before reporting an issue. It may also be useful to search the Knowledge Base and the forum first, in case the problem is known and a solution has already been posted.

If the problem you are seeing causes Maya to crash, it's very useful to attach the crash log to the report. The way to retrieve this report varies with the platform.

Windows

When Maya crashes on Windows, it offers to submit a report to Autodesk. Press the "View Report Details" button to obtain a list of the files included in the report:

The most useful file is the one with the dmp extension, marked in red in the screenshot above. The report files are located in your temporary directory, which is usually C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Temp. Hover your mouse over the DMP file in the report details dialog to see the full path to it. Copy the file from that directory before closing the report dialog and send it to us together with the report. You can cancel the report dialog after that; there's no reason to send the error report to Autodesk if the crash was caused by our plug-in.

The DMP file contains a snapshot of what Maya was doing when the crash occurred. It does not contain information which can be used to identify you. The dmpuserinfo.xml file may contain personal information, but we don't need that file.

MacOS X

The OS X version of Maya has a similar crash reporting mechanism to the Windows version. You will also need to press the "View Report Details" button to see a list of report files:

The relevant file in this case is the one with the crash extension. Press the "View report contents" link to show the files in Finder. Copy the crash file to a different location before closing the report window and send it to us. You can cancel the report dialog after sending us the file.

Linux

Maya doesn't have a crash reporting system on Linux, so you won't be able to obtain a crash log from a normal Maya session. However, if the crash is repeatable, you can obtain a log by following these steps:

Make sure you have the "gdb" package installed. If you do not, install it using the package manager, e.g. run yum install gdb for Redhat, Fedora and CentOS, apt-get install gdb for Debian and Ubuntu etc. You have to be root to be able to perform the install, so you may need to prepend sudo to the commands.
Start Maya from a terminal window by appending the -d gdb flag to its command line, e.g.: /usr/autodesk/maya2012-x64/bin/maya -d gdb. Change the path according to the Maya version you are using and where it is installed.
You will get a prompt prefixed with (gdb). Type run and hit enter.
Wait for Maya to start and trigger the crash.
Switch back to the terminal from where you started Maya. You should see a message saying "Program received signal ..." and another (gdb) prompt.
Type where and hit enter. The debugger will display a list of locations called a "stack trace". Include the complete output produced by the where command when you report the issue. Example output:

(gdb) where
#0 0x00002aaad34a7a4f in MGLFunctionTable::extensionExists(MGLExtension) () from /usr/autodesk/maya2012-x64/lib/libOpenMayaRender.so
#1 0x00002aaad6f07859 in LoadGLFuncs() () from /usr/autodesk/maya2012-x64/bin/plug-ins/maxwell.so
#2 0x00002aaad6ec9060 in initializePlugin(MObject) () from /usr/autodesk/maya2012-x64/bin/plug-ins/maxwell.so
#3 0x00002aaad0817f96 in Tplugin::primaryLoad(Tstring const&, Tstring*) () from /usr/autodesk/maya2012-x64/lib/libOpenMaya.so
#4 0x00002aaad0818211 in Tplugin::load(Tstring const&, Tstring*) () from /usr/autodesk/maya2012-x64/lib/libOpenMaya.so
#5 0x00002aaad087a897 in TloadPluginAction::loadPlugin(TfilePath const&, Tstring const&, bool, Tstring&) () from /usr/autodesk/maya2012-x64/lib/libOpenMaya.so
... etc ...

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