7. Taming the Maya API | Practical Maya Programming with Python

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Table Of Contents

Practical Maya Programming with Python

By : Robert Galanakis

4 (12)

Practical Maya Programming with Python

4 (12)

By: Robert Galanakis

Overview of this book

Practical Maya Programming with Python is a practical tutorial packed with plenty of examples and sample projects which guides you through building reusable, independent modules and handling unexpected errors. If you are a developer looking to build a powerful system using Python and Maya's capabilities, then this book is for you. Practical Maya Programming with Python is perfect for intermediate users with basic experience in Python and Maya who want to better their knowledge and skills.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Introspecting Maya, Python, and PyMEL

1. Introspecting Maya, Python, and PyMEL

Creating your library

Exploring Maya and PyMEL

Building the pmhelp function

Summary

2. Writing Composable Code

2. Writing Composable Code

Defining composability

Learning to use list comprehensions

Writing a skeleton converter library

Writing a character creator

Improving the performance of PyMEL

Summary

3. Dealing with Errors

3. Dealing with Errors

Understanding exceptions

Living with unhandled exceptions

Golden rules of error handling

Practical error handling in Maya

Building a high-level error handler

Installing the error handler

Improving the error handler

Summary

4. Leveraging Context Managers and Decorators in Maya

4. Leveraging Context Managers and Decorators in Maya

Inverting the subroutine

Introducing decorators

Introducing context managers

Context managers for changing scene state

Creating the denormalized_skin context manager

Creating a decorator to record metrics

Advanced decorator topics

Summary

5. Building Graphical User Interfaces for Maya

5. Building Graphical User Interfaces for Maya

Introducing Qt, PyQt, and PySide

Establishing rules for crafting a GUI

Installing PySide

Supporting PySide and PyQt

Creating the hierarchy converter GUI

Integrating the tool GUI with Maya

Working with menus

Working with Maya shelves

Summary

6. Automating Maya from the Outside

6. Automating Maya from the Outside

Controlling Maya through request-reply

Designing the automation system

Understanding the Maya startup routine

Building the request-reply automation system

Practical uses and improvements

Summary

7. Taming the Maya API

7. Taming the Maya API

Explaining types

Introducing Maya's API and architecture

Learning the Maya Python API by example

Creating a Maya Python plugin

Using PyMEL in a plugin that loads during startup

Summary

8. Unleashing the Maya API through Python

8. Unleashing the Maya API through Python

Understanding Dependency Graph plugins

Demystifying Python metaprogramming

Designing the node factory

Building the node factory

Extending the node factory

Summary

9. Becoming a Part of the Python Community

9. Becoming a Part of the Python Community

Understanding Open Source Software

Creating a site directory for third-party modules

Working with Python distributions in Maya

Contributing to the open source community

Engaging with the wider community

Summary

A. Python Best Practices

A. Python Best Practices

The args and kwargs parameters

String formatting

String concatenation

Raw strings and string literals

Path building and manipulation

Unicode strings

Using the doctest module

Adopting Test-Driven Development

Using the GitHub repository for this book

Index

Index

Explaining types

There are many definitions of the computer science term type. There are so many, in fact, that choosing one is difficult. The best definition depends on what your perspective is. A compiler writer may see a type as an abstract mathematical entity. A statistics programmer may see it as a name and series of values. We will approach types from the perspective of a Python programmer who needs to get work done.

Note

I consider the terms type and class interchangeable in Python (though not in all other languages). It can be perhaps argued that they are not exactly the same, but for our purposes they are.

We'll start with the definition that a type is a name associated with some values. A name and value pair is called an attribute. Consider the following statement:

widget = PySide.QtCore.QWidget()

In that statement, the type of the widget variable is Pyside.QtCore.QWidget. By virtue of widget being an instance of the QWidget type, it has certain names and values. For example, widget...

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