Artists Guide to MEL
Discover creative alternative uses for MEL. Learn Maya Embedded Language (MEL) with an artist-driven approach and add greater flexibility in your workflow. Software required: Maya 8.5 or higher.
What you'll learn
Discover creative alternative uses for MEL. Learn Maya Embedded Language (MEL) with an artist-driven approach and add greater flexibility in your workflow. Contains over 4 hours of intuitive project-based training. Ideal for artists new to MEL. Popular highlights include: Creating if/for Loops; Storing Scripts as Procedures; Sourcing and Executing; Multi-line MEL Scripts; Opening External Applications with MEL; Building Custom Marking Menus; Variable Naming Conventions; Understanding Variable Types; Building an Incremental Save Script; Concatenating Strings and Integers; Get Attributes into Variables; Using If Statements; Expressions in Expression Editor; Creating ScriptNodes; Accessing Array Contents; Building User Interfaces; Building Custom Tools; Using Match and Substitute Strings. Software required: Maya 8.5 or higher.
Table of contents
- My First MEL Command 5m
- Feedback Using the Command Response 5m
- First Look at the Script Editor and Multi-line Code 10m
- Shelves and MEL 5m
- Launching Photoshop from Maya 5m
- Creating Custom Marking Menus 6m
- Building a Custom Application for Saving Files 6m
- Understanding Variables and How to Use Them 6m
- Understanding Float and String Variables 7m
- Building the Incremental Quicksave 7m
- Setting Attributes with MEL 7m
- Getting Attributes with MEL 8m
- Checking Attributes with if Statements 7m
- Expressions 9m
- Script Nodes 11m
- Arrays 8m
- Dealing with Selections 11m
- Building Custom User Interface Windows 20m
- Coding the Procedure for Keyframing 11m
- Integrating a Procedure with Your Custom UI 10m
- Other Types of 'for' Loops 13m
- Using Arrays to Build a Tail 11m
- Using the File Name in the Incremental Quicksave 8m
- Identifying the Iteration Number 8m
- Fixing a Looping Script 5m
- Adding Color Attributes to Drive Lights 12m
- Bonus Lesson: Using Python Inside of Maya 6m
- Bonus Lesson: Using Variables in Python 5m
- Bonus Lesson: Using MEL Inside of a Python Script 8m
