I just wish there was a "psudo"-gui type melscript editor.
Not sure how that would work, but I guess one can wish
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06-01-2003
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I just wish there was a "psudo"-gui type melscript editor.
Not sure how that would work, but I guess one can wish
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07-01-2003
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By trade I'm a programmer so found the mel stuff ok - certainly a bit dry but nothing unusual.
I'm a total beginner at the 3d stuff but the scripting possibilities set my imagination going.
Anyways my point eventually - if you learn the language it will start to make sense, like anything else. For me the 'art' stuff is way more difficult than the programming.
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07-01-2003
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07-01-2003
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https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...roduct-details
-Emo
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MEL Scripting for Maya Animators vs. Complete Maya Programming
I figured I'd jump in and describe some of the differences between the book Chris and I wrote (MEL Scripting for Maya Animators) and David Gould's book (Complete Maya Programming: An Extensive Guide to MEL and the C++ API).
It's worth noting that both books came out the same month from the same publisher, which wouldn't have happened if they weren't complementary to each other.
David's book (Complete Maya Programming) devotes about half its length to MEL and about half to programming plug-ins in C++. His book focuses on development of generic tools and plug-ins, and requires somewhat more comfort with programming to get started. However, if you're an experienced programmer with a good idea of what you want to do with MEL in the first place then I hear you'll probably like his approach, and I'm greatly looking forward to getting my hands on a copy.
A reader in another forum who'd read both books described ours (MEL Scripting for Maya Animators) as more "gentle" but still fairly technical. We don't discuss Maya's API at all; instead our first half consists of a walkthrough of expressions and MEL and then a series of chapters on language features.
The second half consists of fourteen examples of how to apply MEL and expressions to specific kinds of effects and character animation problems that might take half an hour to an hour each to work through.
We have a few examples on using MEL in particle dynamics, a few examples related to solid body dynamics, a couple of chapters related to character rigging, and a framework for a simple crowd system presented over four examples.
Part of what we attempted to do with MEL Scripting for Maya Animators was communicate why and when MEL and expressions are valuable in animation production, what kinds of problems they're best used to solve, and when *not* to use them as well. We took care to make sure that a reader who started out knowing that MEL was important but didn't know how it would make life easier would come away with an idea of how to use their new knowledge to get something useful done.
At the same time, we tried to make sure that our examples had enough substance to them that even those who knew MEL pretty well might come away with new ideas. I've already had a few very experienced colleagues of mine, people for whom I might have thought the book too introductory, come back to me and say they found things that had made their lives much easier that they just couldn't find in the documentation. That made me feel good, because if all we're doing is parroting what's in the Maya docs we haven't really added anything to the discussion.
Our website at www.melscripting.com has a complete outline. You can also download and look at the code from the chapters there, although I can't guarantee that it will make a lot of sense without the book beside you.
If it were me, I'd probably want to have both books, and fortunately they're both reasonably inexpensive at Amazon. (I notice that certain other recent Maya books cost almost as much as both of ours put together!!) :-)
Anyway, if you have any questions about what Chris and I cover in the book or how we cover it, please feel free to write.
-- Mark
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11-01-2003
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Seriously though, when is this going to be available? It looks like it was due to be published Dec 2002 although Amazon are taking pre-orders.
Last edited by mrmacca; 11-01-2003 at 07:06 AM.
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-- Mark
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Example:
string $a[];
$a = 'particle -p 5 0 5 -name Sun';
print($a);
gives syntax error in line 2
But this one works:
string $a[];
$a = eval("particle -p 5 0 5 -name Sun");
print($a);
mayan@netcabo.pt
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11-01-2003
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mayan@netcabo.pt
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11-01-2003
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LOL
only j/k mate
you ever fancy moderating a mel area on a board ?
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Actually I really would never barge into a forum like this and start plugging the book if there weren't already a discussion about it.Anyway, this forum's a happy discovery and I hope I can add something useful.
-- Mark
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