Help me with this using MEL: Opening and Closing Door

[chris-schoen]

Greetings, I need help from someone with this project of mine. I have these doors that need to open and close, so this is how it works, at frame 1, the right door is to be set at tx=0, and at frame 12, the right door is to be set at tx=11. I happened to be able to MEL the doors to open and close with each other without doing each door individually, using this code, 

Door_Left.translateX=Door_Right.translateX*-1;

The right door controls the left one.
I have been using keyframes to make it work, but it is time consuming, does anyone know how to make the doors open and close smoothly without keyframing, and I'm sure there are some who know how to. Oh, and by the way, the doors have to be in the open position at the end.

[chris-schoen]

I forgot to mention, at frame 24, the right door is to be set at tx=0 again.

[chris-schoen]

Sorry, once again, I forgot to mention, this is to repeat 20 1/2 times, the 1/2 being the doors being in the open position at the very end. Thanks again.

[jan-ace]

Hey Chris,

wel you can do this with a mel script that creates the keyfranmes for you. But doing it completely witout keyframes would be way to intensive for what you are trying to do.

But if you want to automate the keying proccess you could do it with a mel script.

// ammount of times you want the door to open and close
$animTimes = 20;
// ammount of frames between each close and open (so now it takes 12 frames to open and 12 frames to close again)
$frames = 12; 
// get the current time so you can do this at any position in your timeline
$time = `currentTime -query`;
for ($i=0; $i <$animTimes;$i++){
    // keyframe the translation with door closed
    setKeyframe -attribute "translateX" -v 0 -t $time Door\_Right;
    // set the next key position
    $time = $time + $frames;
    // keyframe the translation with door opened 
    setKeyframe -attribute "translateX" -v 11 -t $time Door\_Right;
    // set the next key posision
    $time = $time + $frames;
}

[jiang-jieqi]

i think expresstion is enough.don`t be used mel to do this thing.

[joojaa]

Well its not inide teh scope of mel to do something, its in the scope of mel to tell others to do something. In this case the DG. mel can both do this and not do this at the same time. So mel would do keyframes, a expression etc. but the job is done by the dg, You dont even need a expression for this not really. just a multiply divide node.