Hi,

I need to develop a GUI which can manipulate objects through Maya. My main issue is that I don't want it to look like I'm just running a script in Maya; I want it to look like a stand-alone app that you can run without having any prior knowledge of Maya whatsoever. I was thinking of:

- Maya plug-in which opens a whole new maximized MEL window
- Separate GUI (C# or Java) which can call MEL commands on Maya (which is running in background)

Are either of these viable? As I said, I want someone to be able to open and use this app without having to play with Maya itself (it's a program for evolving 3D art).

And on a completely separate note, can MEL take a screenshot of the current 3D view?

Thanks.