Best way to learn MEL?

[safakoner]

If you want to buy a book about MEL you have to look at this (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558608419/qid=1061376198/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-4136066-0429567?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) book

[wgreenlee1]

keep your script ed indow open also.
You can really see whats going on by "Echoing all commands".
Very cool stuff.

[loked]

Hey,

There are currently 3 really good books that are out there.

Complete Maya Programming

Mel Scripting for Maya Animators

Mel Companion Guide

All of these are really good and I'd recommend trying to get all three eventually. They all offer different useful things.

If you cant afford books right now. I'd go through the Maya documentation on Mel and then like people were saying echo all commands in the script editor. When a command comes up that interests you just type help -doc -command in the command line and it'll give you help on that particular command. Make sure you replace -command with the actual command eg. help -doc -xform



Good Luck:thumbsup:

later:wavey:
loked

[÷ÁÖ]

Good Luck

[mark_wilkins]

I recommend those three books as well! If you're new to programming in a C-like language or new to programming entirely, you probably would be best served by starting with MEL Scripting for Maya Animators (http://www.melscripting.com/) mainly because it's the one of these books that's most geared toward beginners. (I did write the book, by the way, but I'm not intending to talk it up at the other books' expense! :D)

After that, I'd suggest going to The MEL Companion (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1584502754/markwilkinsho-20) if you're looking for more advanced production-oriented examples and Complete Maya Programming (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558608354/markwilkinsho-20/) if you're interested in plug-in development in C++ or more in-depth coverage of Maya's dependency graph.

The MEL Companion and Complete Maya Programming are great books, by the way, but they're definitely better for readers who have already learned basic MEL scripting.

-- Mark

[loked]

I'm gonna help Mark out here and agree with him completely;) He is the author of Mel Scripting for Maya Animators, but he's also definitely being honest about each of those books. His book is the one that will give you a better introduction to both Mel and the C language. Now all he needs to do is bring out his second book and then he'll really be the man:thumbsup:

If you're a beginner, I'd definitely go with his book!!

later:wavey:
loked

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