Changing the name of an Attr - .translateX ?!?

[starkz]

hey guys, quick question, sounds easy but have found no way of doing it.

all I want to do is change the visual representation of Translate X,Y and Z to say - left, forward and up. the renameAttr wont work on this since it only changes user defined attributes.

So I've tried creating the Left, Forward and Up Attributes on the object then displaying them in the channel box (while hiding the others) and linking the translations to these. works ok except it only runs one way!

e.g. you can move the object on screen and the values will change in the channel box, but you can't adjust the channel box values to affect the object. Anything I try doing I still end up with a recursive loop.

Any idea's on this? I mean the best way would to be able to just change the names of "TranslateX..." to what I want, but does Maya allow this?

any help greatly apreciated.

cheers - alex.

[gdc]

aliasAttr is what your looking for.

// change TY to "Up"
aliasAttr up object.ty;

--g

[starkz]

thank you
thank you
thank you!

can't beleive what I went through to come up with a solution and it was that easy! hah. brilliant!

[tbriggs]

thanks, that 's a good one and into the lib it goes

[synapsevfx]

I've tried the same thing, but I can't seem to get the new name into the channel box in lieu of the origional name.

[synapsevfx]

DOH!!! never mind, I was trying to put the aliasAttr command in my build script after the command to set the same channel up to drive something else.

So,

You have to run the aliasAttr command BEFORE any incoming or outgoing connections are established.

[starkz]

yup.
works well huh!?

have another question though (might have to start a new post) - but do you guys know of anyway to have 2 objects rotations - lets say spheres - effect eashother?
e.g. so you rotate one and the other roatates the same (easy) NOW rotate the other one and it rotates the first one (hard).
see what I mean? anything I do and I get a loop.
is this a dead end?

cheers - alex.

[markwilkins]

The problem is that, in Maya, an attribute can be keyed or it can be driven by another node (like an expression), but not both.

You could possibly set up something like you describe by grouping each object and using expressions to connect the groups and objects, but it wouldn't necessarily produce the result that you want.

If your goal is just to be able to affect how you manipulate the orientation when you're working on the scene, maybe there's another way to set up a UI that doesn't require actually constraining the two objects?

-- Mark

[joojaa]

In reply to:
The problem is that, in Maya, an attribute can be keyed
or it can be driven by another node (like an expression), but not both.

Ok, mark youre right offcorse but theres no reson why you couldnt have a utility node in between that sums or switches betveen differing input sources!
But having doube inheritance is forbidden for dag (stands for Directed Asyclic graph) nodes. The reasoning behind this is quite solid, since it would make the entire idea behind dependsble trensforms (would turn them into dynamic simulations that are dependent on the resolution in the last frame). For anything else ths is offcourse totaly acceptable!

But whats the reason why you need to be able to key them both i mean? the only thing it makes easier is selection. But you could even make it so that when any of them is selected it rotates only one of them!

also it stands to reason effect it would be possible to do this with simulations altough the ui wouldnt be any prettier than forcing to use the rotation of one node! And youd loose much more on the animation front!

but the only intelligent solution if you must have this is to make a new transform node with the api that accepts several transforms for (multiple shapes) and one rotation. Because it wouldnt interfere with the general idea (no even api cant break the idea, atleast very easily!)

or ahem... even simpler came into my mind 2 seconds ago. MAke a history connection that feeds the rotation and key that... If you now can make it have a normal rotation manipulator then youre set... Will ponder on this.

also this "limitetion", is why the trax is not so usefull for summing turning n walkcycles.