hi,
thanx for replying. i don't want to make any games yet. i just want to start out slow. what i meant by taking input was, for instance, if i press space bar, the object would increment its Y-axis, hence making it seem like a jump. similarly pressing the arrow keys would increment the X and Z axes. in a programming language i could have done it something like this:

cin>>key; //reads the input
if (key==up) z++;
if (key==down) z--;
if (key==left) x++;
if (key==right) x--;

apparently this won't work on maya because cin is c++. what is the equivalent code in maya's mel?...if there is one...thanx a lot.