Book Image

Practical Maya Programming with Python

By : Robert Galanakis
Book Image

Practical Maya Programming with Python

By: Robert Galanakis

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Practical Maya Programming with Python
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


In this chapter, we learned all about using PySide to build graphical user interfaces. First, we went over some important concepts and strategies for building GUIs with PySide. Then we saw how writing your interface with Qt is superior to using a WYSIWYG editor or Maya commands. Our main project was building a GUI frontend for the hierarchy converter library we built in Chapter 2, Writing Composable Code. We developed and tested the GUI totally outside of Maya, including mocking up how it responds to user interaction. We then hooked it up for actual use in Maya with a minimal amount of code. Finally, we did some work with Maya's menu system, creating a system to mark menu items as new, and revert their styling the first time they are clicked.

If this chapter was all about improving how humans interact with Maya, the next chapter is the total opposite. We will explore ways to control Maya in a totally automated fashion so that it can be scripted to perform complex tasks orchestrated...