One of my favourite things in Maya 8.5 is the addition of Python. It can be used alongside of or as an alternate to MEL. I love MEL and it has served me well and it will continue to work well for me and you. Having said that, here are two benefits of python.
It's a popular and well established language - this means lots of users and lots of support for it. Generally speaking, there are more people with python experience than there are with MEL experience so there's lots of people to take advantage of it. With this, there's lots of modules for python to extend its functionality. As an example, the math module supports more functions than are available in MEL.
It can also be used to write plugins as there are bindings to the API. With the Maya API you can write nodes and tool contexts, among other things. With python, you can do this without the overhead of a compiler. Where you need serious performance, you'll most likely want to stick with c++ but keep in mind that you could do some quick prototyping with python.
I started with a longer list and have decided to make some examples to illustrate other strengths. I will follow up with those as new posts.
If you're anxious to start learning, python.org has a good list of getting started materials.
Python in Maya 8.5
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Posted by mogkc on 16 Feb, 2007 at 01:45 PM
Yeah - adding that stuff to the sineNode makes it pretty useful 
Let me know if you want to share it with others.
Let me know if you want to share it with others.
Posted by paulalso on 24 Jan, 2007 at 10:22 AM
I compared the scripted spSineNode.py with the c++ sineNode..... the logic of node creation seemed more apparent to me. For the small nodes I am likely to write, it seems more attractive to me. Without all that MStatus stuff it is a lot cleaner. And of course, I had to hack an amplitued, freq and phase into it.....
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