Learn Scripting for Both Unity And Maya 8.5?

Unity Engine
1

Greetings Everyone!

I am about to dive into learning both Unity and Maya 8.5 and had a question before I begin…

Is there any scripting language that both applications support so that I can focus one learning just one? The only thing I could dig up was something called IronPython that appears to be supported in Mono as well as under Maya but wanted advice from those with experience in such matters…

Any help is appreciated. Thanks! :slight_smile:

2

Added to that, is there any point in learning .mel scripting to bring into Unity? Or is that info never going to be seen inside Unity?
thanks
AC

3

Unity supports Boo, which is a variant of Python. You could probably learn both Boo for Unity and Python for Maya 8.5 without much trouble.

4

Why do you want to script Maya?

Everybody I know make their models just fine without scripting Maya… I’d say focus on learning Javascript for Unity, and spend you time in Maya making beautiful models :slight_smile:

5

Thats a fair call. But if I generally want to be skilled and employable in the animation/games industry, its probably wise to invest some time in mel scripting.
Theres also quite a bit of learning resources too. Sorry this is not a direct Unity question. So I’ll just have to try I guess. the old rotating cube trick perhaps.

Thanks
AC

6

Thanks for your replies.

My purpose in learning to script for Maya is that I intend to do some animation there and just wanted to get started about things in the most effective way to achieve general proficiency in both apps.

I have some experience with Javascript and have heard that Python is somewhat less pleasant :x. so perhaps I will focus on using JavaScript in Unity and ignore scripting in Maya until I see what can be accomplished without it.

Thanks again.

7

MEL can be used for some cool effects and can save a lot of time on some repetitive tasks. The Maya class at my school was full when I tried to take it a couple of years ago so I learned it as an independent study and learned MEL along the way. Some uses for MEL:

-control the dynamics engine (something that’s probably not useful if you’re going to use Unity)

-create/name/edit a bunch of primitives or simple models either all the same or with incremental or random differences (might be useful for level design depending on game type)

-create custom tools and interface control panels that have frequently used commands, or that can create custom meshes, etc. (might be useful depending on what you’re modeling and your personal modeling preferences)

That all said, MEL won’t make you a better modeler. No one was ever really impressed with the models I made, but a lot of people did say things like “Cool. I didn’t know Maya could do that kind of stuff.”

8

Here’s an old tutorial I wrote that includes some uses of MEL. It shows how to make a 2D array of cubes that are named, and how to create a control panel to move a sphere around a maze in the dynamics engine. It’s actually a partial implementation of PacMan in 3D.

29607–1092–$pacmeltutorial_343.pdf (616 KB)