T0352 - Digital Tutors Digital Tutors The Artists Guide to MEL

Discover creative alternative uses for MEL. Learn Maya Embedded Language (MEL) with an artist-driven approach and add greater flexibility in your workflow. Contains over 4 hours of intuitive project-based training. Ideal for artists new to MEL.Popular highlights include:

• Creating if/for Loops


• Storing Scripts as Procedures


• Sourcing and Executing


• Multi-line MEL Scripts


• Opening External Applications with MEL


• Building Custom Marking Menus


• Variable Naming Conventions


• Understanding Variable Types


• Building an Incremental Save Script


• Concatenating Strings and Integers


• Get Attributes into Variables


• Using If Statements


• Expressions in Expression Editor


• Creating ScriptNodes


• Accessing Array Contents


• Building User Interfaces


• Building Custom Tools


• Using Match and Substitute Strings

Lesson Outline:

1.	Introduction and project overview	0:57
2.	My First MEL Command	5:14
3.	Feedback using the Command Response	4:33
4.	First look at the Script Editor and multi-line code	9:41
5.	Shelves and MEL	4:38
6.	Launching Photoshop from Maya	4:57
7.	Creating custom Marking Menus	6:21
8.	Building a custom application for saving files	5:47
9.	Understanding Variables and how to use them	5:55
10.	Understanding Float and String variables	6:55
11.	Building the Incremental QuickSave	6:38
12.	Setting attributes with MEL	7:24
13.	Getting attributes with MEL	8:06
14.	Checking attributes with If Statements	7:04
15.	Expressions	9:25
16.	Script Nodes	11:08
17.	Arrays	8:12
18.	Dealing with Selections	10:44
19.	Building custom User Interface windows	19:39
20.	Coding the procedure for Keyframing	11:18
21.	Integrating a procedure with your custom UI	10:10
22.	Other types of "for" loops	13:10
23.	Using Arrays to build a tail	10:36
24.	Using the file name in the Incremental QuickSave	8:14
25.	Identifying the Iteration Number	8:27
26.	Fixing a looping script	5:05
27.	Adding color attributes to drive lights	12:11
28.	Bonus Lesson: using Python inside of Maya	5:38
29.	Bonus Lesson: using variables in Python	5:02
30.	Bonus Lesson: using MEL inside of a Python script	7:42
	Total Run Time:	4:00:51