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Practical Maya Programming with Python

By : Robert Galanakis
Book Image

Practical Maya Programming with Python

By: Robert Galanakis

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Practical Maya Programming with Python
Robert Galanakis
Jul, 2014 | 352 pages
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Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Practical Maya Programming with Python
Practical Maya Programming with Python
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introspecting Maya, Python, and PyMEL
Introspecting Maya, Python, and PyMEL
Creating your library
Exploring Maya and PyMEL
Building the pmhelp function
Summary
2
Writing Composable Code
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Python Best Practices
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
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Previous Section
End of Chapter 3
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