Need project advice for making scripts in maya

dizzi

Hello all,
I am currently studying computer science and in my python class we are allowed to choose a project that we must work on throughout the course. i decided I wanted to write scripts in python for maya as I am somewhat familiar with that software. i have not done scripting in it before though. I would really appreciate If any of you could give me some suggestions. 

poopipe

Pick something to do,  learn to navigate the command reference and you're good.  Maya is extremely easy to develop for once you get your head round the architecture (which is just nodes, attributes and connections) 

The best labour saving thing you can do is get pycharm, hook it up and get the debugger working.

dizzi

Thanks for tips @poopipe ,  I am leaning towards making an auto rig script. However, I have never done any rigging before. How long do you think this will take? To be honest I am worried about the workload I am putting on myself by choosing this project. 

poopipe

A simple skeleton builder would take a matter of hours but wouldn't be particularly useful. 
It takes rigging experience (or access to someone with lots of it) to design a more general system - the code part isn't really the problem, rigging is complex. 

You might be better tackling a subject that requires less prior knowledge. 
Maya has shitty UX in general so there's plenty of room for tool development. 

Someone on here recently announced coiffure which appears to be a good example of how to extend and improve a maya feature. 
If they haven't sorted the Arnold render to texture tools out yet that might be a good thing to develop something around.