PyMEL included with Maya 2011

[Chad Dombrova]

By now you may have seen the announcements for Maya 2011.  It's my pleasure to tell you that the rumors are true: PyMEL will be shipped with Maya, right alongside the maya python package.  Those of you still sitting on the fence can now safely get off  :)

PyMEL is still open source and will stay that way.  the PyMEL team is responsible for delivering a stable version of PyMEL to Autodesk for each release, and PyMEL's unit test suite is now run as part of Maya's testing framework, so if Autodesk makes a change that break something, we'll all know about it.

The version of PyMEL included with 2011 will be 1.0.0, but we will still be doing point releases that you can install over top of the pre-installed version in the usual ways. we actually have a 1.0.1 with fixes discovered since the 2011 code freeze that we'll release shortly.  the current set of installation instructions should work across all versions, including 2011.  those of you who have tested 1.0 now have some insight into why the installation became more complex:  pymel 1.0 comes with modifications to the maya package that are now standard with 2011, but which need to be installed for prior versions of Maya.

the official repo for PyMEL is now on github:  http://github.com/LumaPictures/pymel

git and github are a great way for various users and studios to collaborate on this project.  if you go to "network" you can already see we have several users who have forked the pymel project and put in their own features and bug fixes, which we then review and pull in to the main repo (andrew, i'll get to yours soon, i swear!). I hope that you and your studio will do the same. 

the official homepage and issue tracker for PyMEL is still googlecode: http://code.google.com/p/pymel/

i know this isn't an academy award or anything, but i want to say thanks to all those who have aided in pymel's development -- Olivier Renouard, Ofer Koren, Paul Molodowitch, Ian Jones, and Andrew Gerard -- and to all the hard-core users out there who have been singing its praises, and also to the folks at Autodesk, especially John Creson and Chris Grebeldinger who have been cheering for PyMEL for awhile now.

-chad

[Kurian O.S ™ ®]

wooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww ... great newsssssssssssssss

congratzzzz Chad and all pymel team

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[haseeb ahmed]

wow, amazing and congratulations....

was checking 2011 features...

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regards,
lala

[John Creson]

I've been holding my breath all day!

PyMEL is here and official and everyone can make it even better.

Congratulations Chad and everyone who is working on PyMEL!

John Creson

[Jason Porath]

Congrats, Chad. Richly deserved.

-J

> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya

[Sajeev Kandasamy]

Yes very happy to hear this..Well done guys....

Sajeev

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http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya

[Byron]

Does that mean in future you just have to do a plain:
from pymel.all import *
and it will be there without actually installing anything ?
Or will it be loaded by default ?

Thanks,
Sebastian

[Sylvain Berger]

Yes congratulation! It is so nice to see such an ambitious project being embraced by Autodesk and incorparated in the product.

Also kudos to Autodesk for leaving it open source.

It's a shame that I need to work less and less with Maya these days :(  The studio is using Softimage and switching to Houdini for effects.

But I will continue to follow pymel closely.

Grats again!

--
Sylvain Berger
Pipeline TD
Modus FX

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[cesar cardenas]

congratulations...

2010/3/10 Sylvain Berger <sylvain...@gmail.com>

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[Sveinbjörn J. Tryggvason]

Congratulations!

I've been one of those fence-sitters and I can't wait to get down from
there.

-sjt

Great job

[Winning Guy]

Awesome news!

Congratulations for all the hard work. I'm looking forward to using
it.

[Judah Baron]

Yeah, that's great news. Congratulations. I guess I can climb down from the fence as well.

-Judah

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[Drake]

Congratulations on such a great news!!

- Drake

[yury nedelin]

is that a fact?
yury

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Drake <drake...@gmail.com> wrote:

Congratulations on such a great news!!

- Drake

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http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya

[Chad Dombrova]

> is that a fact?
> yury

having trouble believing the news? it's for real. do you really think i'd make all this up? :)

-chad

[Chad Dombrova]

> Does that mean in future you just have to do a plain:
> from pymel.all import *
> and it will be there without actually installing anything ?
> Or will it be loaded by default ?

just like maya.cmds, you'll have to import it to use it, but it will be installed by default in maya's site-packages directory.

-chad

[yury nedelin]

wow congrats, this is very cool.

yury

-chad


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[John Patrick]

Congrats, Chad!  Very awesome news...and I'm really glad to hear you guys will still be developing it and keeping it open-source.  I know I've learned a lot just from looking through it and working with it.  I'll have to post the space-switching script and the latest version of the autorigger you were helping me with at some point - I'm especially glad now that I went with PyMEL on these!

-JP

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--
John Patrick
404-242-2675
jspa...@gmail.com
http://www.canyourigit.com

[Horvátth Szabolcs]

You guys rock! And I'm off the fence for sure.

Cheers,
Szabolcs

[Miguel González Viñé]

Congratulations guys!
I was dreaming about this!

2010/3/11 Horvátth Szabolcs <szab...@impresszio.hu>:

> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya

[John Creson]

It's True!

PyMEL is included with Maya2011

Start Maya;
open the scriptEditor;

import pymel.core as pm
...

I like namespaces :)

JohnCreson
Autodesk
MayaQA

2010/3/11 Miguel González Viñé <lich...@gmail.com>:

> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya

[matt thorson]

Thank you so much Chad. You are amazing... Pymel is the cheese for my
Maya Macaroni

> --
> http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya

--
Matthew S. Thorson || FX Artist

[Chad Dombrova]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 2:03 PM, matt thorson <matthew...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you so much Chad. You are amazing... Pymel is the cheese for my
Maya Macaroni

credit goes to everyone who worked on the project. i'm just the spokesman.

[Seth Lippman]

Congrats to you and your team. I've been on the fence for a while,
just out of fear of not being an officially supported product that I
could endorse for production work. I'm really really glad to hear
this, and think you should be very proud of the steps you have taken
to develop something that the community really needed, and its paid
off. Thank you.

[johnvdz]

ive been a sideliner for allot of this time.. but seriously thank you
all for getting this up and running. its community projects like this
that really make the difference and i think pymel's legacy will be a
lasting one. the hrs of debugging and thoughtfully planing of this
project like this will be appreciated fro many years to come, and i
hope thats the larger community will keep adding to this. I feel like
everyone involved has made our lives easier and i am extremely
thankfully for that time and effort.

thanks again all..

john van der Zalm

[Sharva kant]

hearty congrats to Chad and his team!!!

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[PixelMuncher]

I'm also one of the fence-sitters.
In the meantime, I've been learning Python.
This might be a stupid question, but what advantages does Pymel offer
over Python?
Thanks and Congrats.

[Chad Dombrova]

> I'm also one of the fence-sitters.
> In the meantime, I've been learning Python.
> This might be a stupid question, but what advantages does Pymel offer
> over Python?

just to be clear, PyMEL is not an alternative to "python", it's a python package that builds on the maya package, and thus is an alternative to maya's native maya package.

this questions has been asked a number of times on this list. here are some previous responses. others might feel inclined to jump in with some more insight:

http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya/browse_thread/thread/4e57855e72a78ffa/87d8a9fca7434410?hl=en_US&lnk=gst&q=pymel#87d8a9fca7434410

http://groups.google.com/group/python_inside_maya/browse_thread/thread/4eac79f7c2a0fdad/043e0d10b17a9149?hl=en_US&lnk=gst&q=pymel#043e0d10b17a9149

i also think the comparison on our home page goes a long way toward demonstrating the benefits: http://code.google.com/p/pymel/

To summarize:
object oriented code
tons of utilities you'll likely end up having to write yourself otherwise:
python-to-mel and mel-to-python glue, including a mel-to-python translator, and a python-to-mel translator
api utilities
version comparison
object name parsing
callbacks
makes using python from command line work the same as in the gui
data classes
math: vectors, matrices, etc
paths: object-oriented file/path manipulation
frequent bug fixes and point releases, including fixes to maya's own code
user-friendly
docstrings for all classes and commands: ie. the python help() command actually serves a purpose
intuitive to write
bells and whistles
proper exception classes
use of python "with" statement to simplify ui building
support for python attribute editor templates

the list goes on and on.

look, i'll be honest with you: maya's python implementation is an abysmal failure, and it's getting better at a snail's pace. pymel works the way that a python package should and it will save you a lot of time.

-chad

[PixelMuncher]

Thanks a lot Chad:
I'll start working on PyMel next time I'm coding.

Is there a recommended Editor w/PyMel syntax hiliting?