Do Action Every "some" Amount Of Time

[isam]

i want a specific action to happen every lets say 1/25 of a sec, all im figurin out with time is the timerX node, but its a timer, returns the time thats passed, i need something that i cld place in an expression..

any ideas?
thnx

[rob-bateman]

like an expression like this?

tx = frame;

[isam]

i guess i should have specified, real time, without the timeline moving, now any ideas?

[joojaa]

Not with mel not with any particular efficiency anyway. you can do a scriptjob on idle but it wont work very well.

[isam]

:S didnt expect such an answer ! the problem is i want it to run while im working, just like an expression not a scriptjob.
so anyway, jooja, u said not with mel.. i suppose ur talking api? should i take the topic over there??

[isam]

another thing, absolute accuracy isnt really required, i just need it to run like 20 or 30 times a second..

[nr-puckett]

A simple way to solve this would be to create a timer in a simple Flash app(or javascript or whatever) in a webpage connected to maya via the browser plugin

[joojaa]

or commandline, by a server pumping executes into command prompt, a separate python therad,, separate timer therad or whatever.

Mel is not a programming language, its a journaling language. Theres a wild difference, mel cannot extend maya it can just recombine what maya allready can do (now maya can do alot so this can fool you inmto thinking it can do anything), with minimal proghtramming suites. So you first nee dto underatsnd how maya works here

So if this is for something like how long has user pressed down this button kind of thing then no wont work (but theres a post render event you can trigger on that). If its for autosave work one selection changed, but dont do it yourself autosaves been done a million times. If on the otherhad you want to update something outside maya or something into maya dont poll its a bad habit. Let the sender/ reciever work out this form a event. So for example if you need notification whan a files been changed its much easier to do a event instead, and submit the info to a command port.

Anyway your main problem is that mayas explicitly designed not to work thisway. However theers nothing that states you couldnt make a node or a command that executes something out of a 3rd party therad to main therad on interwalls.

Anyway dont do this unless you really need it, so think of a better way. Either work on events that make sense or not. Your directly meddling with mayas core performace metrics here. You can really kill of maya thisway.

PS: polling is the easiet way out but the worst strategy in general for actions like this.

[isam]

what i have in mind is i want to create a script/plugin, to record the movement of the hand(mouse, wacom) as keyframes on whatever that is to be animated, sometimes u can feel the timing of the motion, but can really express it, so i figured this would be a good idea..

so up till now, ive tried several methods, still within mel, starting wiith a scriptJob that runs on timeChange, and tried to have it run while the play is pressed, so that it wld record, but apparently timeChange doesnt work this way, the time change occurs when u stop playback,

ive tried to run an expression thats triggered by "time", and has a setKeyframe on the sequenec u want to apply the animation to, so when i execute the expression, also while playback is active, well it actually works, but it VERY unstable and gives very unexpected results, runs on some keys and doesnt on others, i guess i should have expected that, but i figured id deplete and give up on the mel idea first so i can do it with whatever other method there is.

so could anyone give out any suggestions about how to do such a thing? whether u had any other ways in mel, or any other 3rd party apps, just tell me where 2 go from here! thanks!

[joojaa]

Now why didint you say so, totally different thing altogether.

QUOTE(isam @ 06/21/07, 10:01 AM) [snapback]268438[/snapback]
what i have in mind is i want to create a script/plugin, to record the movement of the hand(mouse, wacom) as keyframes on whatever that is to be animated, sometimes u can feel the timing of the motion, but can really express it, so i figured this would be a good idea.

Maya has a recording interface that lets you do this. No need to act on events just make a motion capture. Its described how to do this in the manual.

Secondly maya also has a scripted context wich lets you record arbitrary mouse movements at maximum handling speed.

[isam]

quoting from maya help :

"The mouse and keyboard are not motion capture devices."

in addition to not having any devices in the list of of the device editor.

secondly, could you explain this? and how i may exploit it??

QUOTE
Secondly maya also has a scripted context wich lets you record arbitrary mouse movements at maximum handling speed.

[joojaa]

Does not matter, if you enable recording maya records ever change, no matter how the change was attained so if you enter a scripted context thet then maps your mouse it gets recorded just as any other motion capture device would.

Like wise if you would move a object with move manipulator and have record on the changes would be recorded too.

So despite them not being motion capture devices does not mean you cant capture their motion or input as its already being captured by default. My favorite capturing is to tweak the timing by connecting a custom time and start record and then retime by moving the virtual slider sideways. to re time the sequence to my liking.

[isam]

thnx 4 ur replies jooja, but a couple of stuff are still arent totally clear,

1st of all, i tried creating a record node and connecting it to the object, but it doesnt have any inputs or outputs,
i saw this option within the mel "play " command there's a flag -record, but i tried it, and it says it keyframes all changes within the play, but it actually does nothing, i dunno what i might have missed,
and if u may clear this up, but what exactly is a "scripted context", is it an expression u use, cause i cldnt find anythin googling it! thnx again

[isam]

ya and one more thing, i cant seem to be able to find a way to set uo the mouse as a device in maya so i cld pull anythin out of it in the device editor, or connect it to anything,

[joojaa]

read the manual entry for scriptCtx. Off course recoding does nothing unless you change something during the play?!?

Again no you dont need to connect anything trough the device editor. Like i said irrelevant. So why would you keep looking when i explicitly said theres nothing for you there.

[isam]

well recording(play -record) isnt doing anything whether i change sth during playback or not! the least i can do b4 posting is having tried that lol

[joojaa]

Well offcourse you cant record anything that already has a incoming connection. Because otherwise theres no place to record stuff in.

[isam]

well there weren't any incoming connections, but anywy i solved it i guess, use the recordAttr command to create the record node and connect it to the attribute, and then use the play -rec command for it to record what ur moving/rotating/scaling,

thnx 4 ur time jooja.. cheers