In this article, I will guide you through the basic usage of Maya's integrated scripting environment (ISE), and demonstrate how to use basic and advanced features of the Maya script language. I will show you how to use basic operators, commands and statements, how to write and call Maya functions and how to use the object browser to navigate through Maya's scene graph. I will also show you how to load scripts and how to create your own functions to save the trouble of typing Maya functions manually.
Download Maya's Scripting Guide (.zip)
Basic Usage of the Maya Scripting Language
Let's start with the basics of the Maya script language. At a high level, the script language is a logical language, which is similar to any other programming language. It allows you to manipulate data types (such as integers, floats, Booleans, strings, objects, collections, etc.) by using basic operators such as +=, -, *, /, %. The basic operators are the minimum that you need to perform logical operations. For example, the addition (+) operator can be used to add two numbers, but it is not used for logic operations like AND or OR.
For the most part, you can run a basic script in 2D or 3D, and the scripting engine will process the script in real-time. Therefore, the scripting engine will execute the script and manipulate data. When you create a 3D script, the engine will automatically generate a 3D scene graph that will contain the data in a 3D format. The script can be used to manipulate the data in that scene graph. In this way, you can create real-time events that change the 3D scene graph in real-time.
Scripting Engine, Maya Engine, or Script Execution Engine?
You may have noticed that Maya has a scripting engine, Maya Engine, and Script Execution Engine (SXE). In this article, I will mostly use the term "script engine" to refer to the scripting engine, and the "Maya engine" and "Script Execution Engine" to refer to the Maya Engine and Script Execution Engine, respectively. Although the Maya scripting engine has the same function and capabilities as the Script Execution Engine, the syntax is different. For example, you cannot use a normal Python script as a script in Maya, instead, you have to use the Maya scripting language.
There are also other features that only the Maya scripting engine has, such as using a Maya datablock to
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