Benefits of learning MEL for character artist?

Alex_J

I've found myself looking up a lot of MEL scripts lately mainly for the purpose of automating repetitive task, or just grabbing a script to make a hotkey from. It's always more difficult than it could be because I don't really understand how programming languages operate.

Besides this, are there any big benefits a character artist could gain from spending some time studying MEL scripting? What do you guys who know it typically use it for? Does it tend to be dedicated tech artist who use it? Does knowing MEL make a candidate more attractive for a character or prop (or enviro) art position?

I know that the art is the main thing, but I don't like to be the guy who knows the least and doesn't know squat about production.

oglu

I would go with python. It can do the same in maya and more. Plus its available across the pipeline. 

I have to go for every little help to my TD. Some day i have to learn scripting.

https://youtu.be/eXFGeZZbMzQ

https://vimeo.com/zurbrigg

throttlekitty

+1 for python over mel.
Knowing some basic scripting is always going to be helpful at some point. Those little automation scripts can sometimes mean cutting some tasks from hours to minutes. For uses as a character artist, maybe you'll end up at a small studio or don't have a TD you can call on. Maybe you'll need to manage some blendshapes, or tweak the shoulder height on 20 characters that were finished some months prior, or something small but tedious like some naming change that you have to do a lot of.

Alex_J

Thanks guys. Yeah I am just kind of trying to convince myself to put some effort into this as I have a hunch it may be worth the effort. Cool to hear what kind of stuff is possible, even though programming is pretty daunting to me. What you mention @throttlekitty about making tweaks to many characters all at once is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. I am working on some game projects with a friend and it's a lot of work to handle for a single artist, especially when there is a change or you discover some error that means a lot of tedious fix up work.

I think pick up some intro to python course here in the near future and just do a little here and there, in addition to grabbing scripts as I feel a need for them. I'll make a proper research into trainign resources but if you guys have any recommendations feel free to drop them, I'd really appreciate it. In particular I need to begin with like, computer language 101 stuff. I don't know how the syntax works or nothing.

Mark Dygert

+1 for taking the Python route. You'll end up learning mel along the way, because most of the python interface is a wrapper for mel commands. But it gives you access to a lot of awesome amazing python tools and libraries so it's well worth it. The important thing is to keep the context of your python learning grounded in Maya. There are a lot of ways to use Python and to learn it but keeping it grounded in Maya is important.

I completely agree with throttlekitty, the automation you can do will help quite a bit and is super useful. There are so many times that I've been able to batch files in minutes when it would have taken hours or days. Of course getting to that point isn't easy but it really helps to be able to do it and once you can, it's hard to think about a time when you couldn't.

The udemy course by Dhruv Govil is really good: https://www.udemy.com/python-for-maya/

He goes over everything in detail, from the ground up and structured the course around projects that can be adapted to most artists workflows. So while he makes a controller manager in one project you can take what you learn to make it a kit-bash library or something else. Its well worth it, I really liked it and it really helped me wrap my head around Python/Mel/Maya.

Alex_J

Perfect. Sounds like a good starting point. Once I finish production for our game here in a few weeks I'm gonna give that course a go.

Thanks @Mark Dygert

Alex_J

Hey guys, just wanted to report that the udemy course Mark suggested is 90% off for two more days