Mel Layers the bane of my existence currently.

deohboeh

I'm trying to write a Mel script to set all Display layers with "LPL in it's name to visible.
Display layers seems to have very bad documentation and I cant find anything.
I've got many many layers and switching each one on one by muda-nuckin one is getting bothersome.

Any help is much appreciated.

Till then I shall be sincerely be banging my head into the desk.



Regards

Dev

deohboeh

Even being able to query all layers would be great!

passerby

well in python you could do something like this

import maya.cmds as cmds

layers = cmds.ls(type='displayLayer')
for i in layers:
    if "LPL" in i:
        cmds.setAttr('%s.visibility' % i, 1)

mel code would be something like

string $layers[] = `ls -type "displayLayer"`; 
for ($i in $layers)
 {
     setAttr ($i + ".visibility") 1;
 }

but you would have to figure out the if statmeant since i dont know how mels string fromatting works off hand

haiddasalami

I spent 30 mins relearning mel haha Passerby got it. Be careful of setting the main Maya display Layer to off as that is locked.

deohboeh

Thanks Pb!! Gonna try this tomorrow morning! This is going to be uber useful!
Thanks for relearning mel for me haiddasalami!

haiddasalami

string $layerlist[] = `ls -type "displayLayer"`;
for ($layer in $layerlist) {
    if ($layer != "defaultLayer") {
        string $layerCheck = `substring $layer 1 3`;
        if ($layerCheck == "LPL") {
            setAttr ($layer+".visibility") 0;
        }
    }  
}

Heres some of the string formatting stuff you can do

passerby

still cant figure out how to check for a string in a string in mel, but if mel is required you could always do this.

string $layers[] = `ls -type "displayLayer"`;

for ($i in $layers)
{
    if (python("'LPL'" + "in" + "'" + $i +"'"))
    {
        setAttr($i + ".visibility", 1);
    }
}

though as you seen it is most easily done via python

edit:
ah hadiddasaalmi beat me to it.

@hadiddasaalmi also have to agree with you hadiddasaalmi, it just feels bad going back to mel once your used to more advanced languages like python and c#

deohboeh

Thanks guys the script worked for me.
I made some changes and here they are:

string $layerlist[] = `ls -type "displayLayer"`;

for ($layer in $layerlist) {

    if ($layer != "defaultLayer") {

        string $lyrChk = endsWith ($layer, "LPL");

        if ($lyrChk) {
            
            setAttr ($layer+".visibility") 1;

        }

    }  

}

@Passerby: I agree mel seems outdated compared to python. I will switch to it soon.