How to select all lights in a scene?

[annmarie-cernoch]

I am trying to write a tool and need to select all lights in a scene. they are all different and the amount of lights in a scene may vary. how do i do that with mel?
i've tried a few different ways but nothing works.

thanks for any help.
am

[krank]

u can try

$lights = `ls -type light`;
select $lights;
pickWalk -d up;

Since the ls command only grabs the shape of the light I don't know any other wat of grabbing it than pick-walking up the hierarchy I'm sure there's a better way.

[thnkr]

or simply Edit->Select All by Type->Lights

which if echo all commands is on Maya will tell you is:

SelectAllLights;

so you can ask what that is

whatIs SelectAllLights;
// Result: Run Time Command //

then you figure out what the runTime command does

runTimeCommand -q -c SelectAllLights;
// Result: select -r listTransforms -lights //

and that's what you use.

[joojaa]

Please dont use the pickWalk for this its very very ugly and is error prone in some situations.* Its also slow because it forces you to update the global selection list making things go to the undo queue needlessly. So to recap dont use pickwalk for dg or dag traversals. There are lost of more efficient and simpler to understand ways to accomplish the same thing.

*its also a very bad habit, that will come and backfire on you one day. Its a bit like eval in this respect. It also shows your lack of skill if used wrong. But there are valid uses... there allways are.

[krank]

Ok thanks for the tip about pickWalk. I'm still learning hence the 'lack of skill'.