Maya, Python and Qt
As a designer/artist it is really powerful to be able to script new tools, or rather script ways to interface with or extending the existing tools. I have previously written tools for maya using mel and tools for adobe products using java script. Since python seems to be a powerful and quite straightforward language and can be used with maya aswell as adobe and other apps, it seems like a good idea to start learning it.
When you write code, there is a logic part (doing things with stuff) and there is the UI – the user interface. QT pronunced “cute” is a cross-platform application and UI framework. This framework make it faster and easier to build a good ui for your application or tool. My mission with this project is to learn more on both python and how to build nice interface to my tools. I have had a look at tkinter. Tkinter is Python’s de-facto standard GUI (Graphical User Interface) package. I haven´t yet used QT so I am exited to start to play with it.
I stumbeled across a blog discussing qt and python called justinAnimator´s thoughts. As you can read on the blog, Justin writes: ”I don’t have an official programming background — just a deep passion for problem-solving and tinkering”. That pretty much sums up my relation to coding. To the passion and the sheer fun of coding comes of course the benefits of using code as a tool. Some things are just not possible with out some coding skills. It can be more advanced rigging/animation tasks aswell as creating, selecting and modifying objects. Another interesting aspect of learning programming especially Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is that it changes how you think of objects created by computers.
More to come on the subject.
Info on installing pyqt for maya 2011 64 bit from autodesk
Another interesting blog that I end up many times is Ryan Trowbridge blog: http://www.rtrowbridge.com/blog/. Another artist that found programing to be a useful tool in the creative process. I like !