Maya Won't Save Due To "Unknown Nodes" - What To Do?

Autodesk Maya is a big and complex piece of software, full of traps and pitfalls for the unwary. 

The "Unknown Nodes" error sometimes occurs when you are trying to save your work, but Maya won’t let you save. This can be frustrating, and the solution is not obvious. What is an unknown node anyway? And what should you do when this happens?

Luckily, the solution is fairly straightforward:

Step One
First, try saving your work as a different file type. Maya offers two kinds - .mb (small files) and .ma (larger files). If Maya won't save your work as a different file type, proceed to step two.

Step Two
Under the file tab in Maya, scroll down to find "optimize scene size". Open up the options box. Make sure that "remove unknown nodes" is selected and the box is ticked. Now click "optimize". You're done. If this still doesn't work, try Step Three.

Step Three
Note that there are three different types of unknown nodes that can prevent Maya re-saving a scene in a different format. They are: Unknown nodes, Unknown transforms and Unknown dag nodes. The second two are uncommon. To delete all three types, open up the Script Editor in Maya and type

delete `ls -type unknown -type unknownDag -type unknownTransform`

If this still doesn't work, start at the beginning and try again. It will work in the end!

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