How To Get The Current Time In The Api?

[yunjun]

Hi, I am trying to retrieve the current time information. I looked in the documentation, the MTime class seems not providing a function to do this. The closest I've found: the "double MTime:: value () const" will "return the current time value in the units that are currently in effect for this instance" but I will need to set it by myself first rather than getting it from the scene. Please advice and thank you.

[rob-bateman]

MAnimControl::currentTime() is probably what you want (which returns an MTime)

[yunjun]

Thanks, Rob Bateman.
I wrote the following:

MStatus SampleCmd::doIt ( const MArgList &args )
{
.....
MAnimControl control= MAnimControl();
MTime currentTime = controll.currentTime();
....
}

the compiler says:

error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol "__declspec(dllimport) public: virtual __thiscall MAnimControl::~MAnimControl(void)" (__imp_??1MAnimControl@@UAE@XZ) referenced in function "public: virtual class MStatus __thiscall SampleCmd::doIt(class MArgList const &)" (?doIt@SampleCmd@@UAE?AVMStatus@@ABVMArgList@@@Z)

error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol "__declspec(dllimport) public: static class MTime __cdecl MAnimControl::currentTime(void)" (__imp_?currentTime@MAnimControl@@SA?AVMTime@@XZ) referenced in function "public: virtual class MStatus __thiscall SampleCmd::doIt(class MArgList const &)" (?doIt@SampleCmd@@UAE?AVMStatus@@ABVMArgList@@@Z)

error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol "__declspec(dllimport) public: __thiscall MAnimControl::MAnimControl(void)" (__imp_??0MAnimControl@@QAE@XZ) referenced in function "public: virtual class MStatus __thiscall SampleCmd::doIt(class MArgList const &)" (?doIt@SampleCmd@@UAE?AVMStatus@@ABVMArgList@@@Z)

1>Debug\sample.mll : fatal error LNK1120: 3 unresolved externals

what is the problem here? I did #include

[rob-bateman]

The function is

MAnimControl::currentTime()

as in...

CODE
MTime currentTime = MAnimControl::currentTime();

read the manual before inventing new and interesting ways of using static functions

[yunjun]

Yes, I did the same before, but the error was:

error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol "__declspec(dllimport) public: static class MTime __cdecl MAnimControl::currentTime(void)" (__imp_?currentTime@MAnimControl@@SA?AVMTime@@XZ) referenced in function "public: virtual class MStatus __thiscall SampleCmd::doIt(class MArgList const &)" (?doIt@SampleCmd@@UAE?AVMStatus@@ABVMArgList@@@Z)

I tried "MTime currentTime = MAnimControl::currentTime();" again, but still got the same error as above.

[rob-bateman]

nope, that's a different error

make sure you link OpenMayaAnim.lib into your plugin...

[yunjun]

Yes, it compiled! Thanks a lot!