Maya

mel

Maya Menu Items In Melscript

Marking menus are a great.
You can customize and create new menus with:
Window>Settings and Preferences>Marking Menu Editor
In Maya Help, search on "Marking Menu" for more info.

You could check these links for more insight into MMs:
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=157484
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/selections.html
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/tangents.html

For Mel, I found this book helpful:
Complete Maya Programming: An Extensive Guide to MEL... by David Gould
If you do any MEL scripting, you should read this book. He covers a lot of the basics, including this topic.
I found it to be a fast read - the second half of the book covers C++. You can't just purchase the first half, but its easily worth the price of the book.

QUOTE(the_keeper @ 03/26/08, 01:04 AM) [snapback]283183[/snapback]
Saw the book Complete Maya Programming online and I will buy it.

I don't recommend the book, apart for some 20 pages everything in the book is superfluous. It dont tackle how to program in maya very well, in fact it quite simply skips over how to use mel effectively. For most parts the book is just a reprint for the maya manuals reference entries. The main problem of the book is that it dnt actually bridge you into maya mindset thus not of an practiacl use when trying to figure out what to do.

When i quickly glanced it i found that:

http://highend3d.com/bookstore/programming...mators-175.html

is a much better approach.

keeper:
My bad, the book doesn't cover Marking Menus - I had copied my recommendation from a different post and forgot to remove "including this topic". Sorry about that.

Jooja:
I read all the Amazon reviews of both books before choosing Complete Maya Programming.

QUOTE(PixL @ 03/26/08, 04:14 PM) [snapback]283207[/snapback]
Jooja:
I read all the Amazon reviews of both books before choosing Complete Maya Programming.

Sure and im telling you if you learn mel and maya as much as i do youll notice that Complete Maya Programming led you astray.

The complete maya programming book looks good, it attacks maya programming like a straightforward, fine. But thing is you don't use either mel nor api the way that the examples in the books do at least mostly. Its just the kind of thing that makes sense to programmers that doesn't apply. If you want another EXPERT oppinion ask Rob Bateman what he thinks of the book.

Also the book skips everything thats important. Such as how to extend the existing maya gui, how to use the mayas built in exploration system to find things out for yourself. It doesn't deal with designing good AE templates, how and when to use scriptjobs, how expressions differ from mel, how to handle common traversing problems, it barely touches how to make things persistent, and how to use modules , how to read the node documentation to survive maya experience and finally how mel is really used.

In total almost everything you'd wantto learn isn't there, when it is it isnt underlined. But im a bit overly sharp here the book has 20 or so pages that are worth it. So yes i learned something form the book, but not a single thing of mel.

PS: anybody out near Helsinki who wants the book can come claim it its just wasting space on my shelf and theres not enough of it. I was thinking of donating it to the public library unless someone needs it more.

Have you ever thought of writing a book Jooja? With all the help you offer here, I'm sure anyone on this forum would be more than excited to purchase a copy.

I think time has passed that need. But yes its been on several agendas. To be honest i didn't really want to write a maya programming book, because thats the problem. A book that teaches how t program maya must also teach all other things of maya and that will be a BIG book.