Maxya, a script editor to be thankful for

Well, my Professional MEL Solutions for Production book finally came! So far it's quite a fantastic read. One cool thing I found was a list of a few nifty script editors - MEL Studio Pro I already covered, but I did come across Maxya (sorry, there's not really a description I can link to) is a fantastic script editor for MEL AND Python, that runs outside of Maya, has a complete MEL command reference built in, and has syntax highlighting for both MEL and Python. The best part - if you execute a command in Maxya, it will run in Maya without having to set up any crazy settings. Ahhhh.

The free Learning Edition has everything except for the option to save, but honestly, I use MEL Studio for, well, MEL anyway, and copying any Python scripts to a different editor and saving them out is no big deal.

Anyway, check it out!

And of course, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Houdini

Side FX has a new version of Houdini out, so I went over to download the apprentice version since I've been meaning to get a stronghold on Houdini. If you're using the apprentice version, you have full access - there's just a watermark and non-standard filetypes (though fortunately one can import objs, which is good, because a modeler I am not). Although schoolwork has prevented me from playing with it too much, I will be doing a few exercises with it for Friday Night Modeling and Rigging workshops.

If anyone has any good rigging resources for Houdini, I would much appreciate them. I have one DVD, and the tools are similar to Maya, but I really want to get into the guts of it and learn the ins and outs. Apparently, knowing Houdini can get you places...

A Few Goodies

Blender has released version 2.49! This means a lot, and I do mean A LOT of great things, especially for rigging. I'm not even going to talk, I'm just going to shut up while you watch.





There's plenty more where that came from. I don't know about you, but I am really, REALLY excited about this. I started using Blender when I was in junior high, and even though the interface has always been a bit confusing to me (something that will be changed in 2.5) I've always liked it.

Hope this makes up for my lack of posting yesterday!

MEL Studio

For the amount that Maya costs, you'd think it would come with a built in script editor that has some nice features, a good debugger, the good features that other script editors/compilers have. But since it doesn't, Max Liani was nice enough to write MEL Studio Pro, a rather nice and robust plugin that does the job quite nicely. Currently I'm using MEl Studio LE which is FREE and SPECTACULAR. I can't wait to get the full version installed at school!



It makes life a whole lot easier!

I keep talking about Maya/MEL. Perhaps I should move over and feature some other spiffy rigging tools in other spiffy packages...stay tuned!