Maya Programming with Python Cookbook

Maya Programming with Python Cookbook

By : Adrian Herbez

Buy this Book

Maya Programming with Python Cookbook

By: Adrian Herbez

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Maya is a 3D graphics and animation software, used to develop interactive 3D applications and games with stupendous visual effects. The Maya Programming with Python Cookbook is all about creating fast, powerful automation systems with minimum coding using Maya Python. With the help of insightful and essential recipes, this book will help you improve your modelling skills. Expand your development options and overcome scripting problems encountered whilst developing code in Maya. Right from the beginning, get solutions to complex development concerns faced when implementing as parts of build.

Maya Programming with Python Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Getting Started with Maya

Introduction

Using the script editor to investigate functionality

Running code from the script editor

Importing Maya's built-in Python functionality

Accessing documentation for a specific command

Understanding Create, Query, and Edit flags

Adding custom folders to your script path

Writing and running an external script

Calling a MEL script with Python

Creating User Interfaces

Introduction

Making a basic window

Simple controls – making a button

Retrieving input from controls

Using classes to organize UI logic

Using nested layouts

Using tabs and scrolling

Adding menus to your UIs

Working with Geometry

Introduction

Working with selected objects and checking node type

Accessing geometric data in polygonal models

Accessing geometric data in NURBS objects

Creating curves

Creating new polygonal faces

Creating new modifiers (noise)

Creating novel primitives (tetrahedron)

Giving Things a Coat of Paint – UVs and Materials

Introduction

Querying UV data

Laying out UVs with Python

Creating shading networks with code

Applying shaders to objects

Using shading nodes for non-shading tasks

Adding Controls – Scripting for Rigging

Introduction

Creating skeletons with script

Setting up set-driven key relationships with script

Adding custom attributes and locking and hiding attributes

Setting up inverse kinematics (IK) with script

Making Things Move – Scripting for Animation

Introduction

Querying animation data

Working with animation layers

Copying animation from one object to another

Setting keyframes

Creating expressions via script

Scripting for Rendering

Introduction

Creating and editing lights

Creating GUI to control all lights

Creating cameras from code

Rendering a sprite sheet

Working with File Input/Output

Introduction

Using the fileDialog2 command to navigate the file system

Reading multiple types of files

Communicating with the Web

Introduction

Opening a web page from script

Grabbing data from a server

Working with XML data

Working with JSON data

Sending POST data to a web server from Maya

Advanced Topics

Introduction

Wrapping Python functionality in MEL

Creating custom tools using contexts

Using script jobs to trigger custom functionality

Using script nodes to embed code in scenes

Combining script jobs and script nodes

Index

Customer Reviews

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Rendering a sprite sheet

In this example, we'll be building a tool to render out multiple views of an object to a single image. This could be used to create a sprite sheet for use in an isometric game.

In the course of the example, we'll use both Maya's Python library (to render out frames) and the Python Imaging Library (PIL) to combine them into a single image.

Four views rendered out and combined into a single image

Getting ready

Make sure that you have an object in your scene and it is at the origin. Also make sure that you have some number of cameras set up. You can either do it manually, or refer to the previous example on how to create cameras from script.

You'll also want to make sure that you have PIL installed on your system. The best way to do that is to grab Pillow (a fork of PIL). More information on Pillow can be found at http://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/3.2.x/.

In order to install Pillow in a (relatively) painless way, you'll probably want to grab PIP, which is a robust package manager...

Maya Programming with Python Cookbook

By : Adrian Herbez

Maya Programming with Python Cookbook

By: Adrian Herbez

Overview of this book

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Current Title:

Maya Programming with Python Cookbook

Rendering a sprite sheet

Getting ready