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but the fact is that most of the animators don't understand a word to mel, and don't want to. that's just not they're job
Well, when i actually talk to animators most of them do know how to use mel. you'd be supprised how many do KNOW how to use it (and in thiscase its actually just copypsting stuff). But the real question with what i deal with every day is the pat of the phrase. " don't understand a word to mel, and don't want to".
Well have you ever heard of outsourcing? Why do you think your jobs are steadily being shifted to low paying countries. Well the reason is theese guys dont say a stupid thing like that. They will do your work for cheaper and better than you, because they lack that thinking, even 1/20th of your salary is worthwhile for them to do WHATEVER IT TAKES. Even learning mel and being a animator.
so my advice is RUN or get trampled, if mel makes you run faste then you have no choice want or not its there. And thinking like that just makes the decision a nobrainer
Anyway the bottom line is:
The manufacturers of a porgram can never anticipate all needsThey cant know all possible combinations of thingsMayas actually designed not for the animator or the programmer but TEAM consisting of both, if you leave the other out then you loose 80% of what maya isAnd no theres a lot of things you can't do with mel and the API, so isntead of doing stuff you can do let them do the stuff you CANT do,
Anyway why dont you make yourself better by buying a indian TD for your porduction house for 2-6 hours every week. It probably costs you nothing makes him happy and you SO MUCH better
PS besides if you needed that button all youd have to ask someone to implement it im sure tehres lot of people who would do it for you free. Indeed its is there its called rivet.mel
PPS. theres also a reason why the track effect is not expopsed in the gui, its because maya has a stupid relation when it comes to shapes. Maya allways evaluates the mass, so even when you want to aquerry just one point maya ends up eveluatting the entire mesh history. NOW ive actually requested alias to make a way to ask only a subset becuse querries like this are quite usefull. not only here but yoo vcould also skip the entire process of making proxy heads etc because maya would automatically handle it.
As a side effect because its now working more in tune wth rest of maya youd get this effect for free.
THINK BIG