API method question

[callum-macalister]

Hi all, first post!

Quick question re: Maya API... I want to develop a plugin that operates like naturalmotion's endorphin plugin: i.e. data generated in one program can be controlled and applied to objects in Maya in realtime. Is there a generic method for this (not necessarily solely a Maya API method). I imagine it consists of creating a "scratch file" or some other handle that can be piped into Maya on a per-request basis, but rather than kluge together some nasty code, I hoped there was some cleaner method out there. There's a few communicators like this on the market of course (XFrog, Vue xStream etc), and I'm sure I'll have to do some API work on the target application too...

If anyone needs more details to answer this I'll provide them, but I don't want to get ahead of myself if I'm doomed to failure!

Thanks in advance

Callum

[verbatimline]

the second or third CGToolkit book has a chapter on exporting animation from one character to another. The exported animation is simply a text file listing the object, keyframes and curve handles positions. If you can write a script in your source app that exports animation data in the same format, you could use CG Toolkit's tool to apply it. So most of the work is pretty much done for you without a need for complex plugin development.

[joojaa]

I dont think that's a good solution, at least use memory mapped binary files if you must. Theres lots of interprocess communication methods that don't rely on files such as COM etc.

[verbatimline]

Hi Joojaa, that sounds interesting. Can you elaborate?
How do you access COM and what type of info would you pass from one app to the other?