maya script delete empty groups?

malcolm

Anyone got a script that deletes groups with nothing in them or groups that have groups in them.

Shawner

Run this in the python tab in your script editor.

import maya.cmds as cmds
 
transforms =  cmds.ls(type='transform')
deleteList = []
for tran in transforms:
    if cmds.nodeType(tran) == 'transform':
        children = cmds.listRelatives(tran, c=True) 
        if children == None:
            print '%s, has no childred' %(tran)
            deleteList.append(tran)
            
cmds.delete(deleteList)

THNKR

or use File->Optimize Scene Size [options]

Remove empty: (check) Transforms.

malcolm

THNKR, that rarely works. Not sure what maya considers empty transforms but it's pretty picky, I think even a group within a group doesn't qualify for delete.

sama.van

malcolm wrote: »

THNKR, that rarely works. Not sure what maya considers empty transforms but it's pretty picky, I think even a group within a group doesn't qualify for delete.

Yeah but if your group is in another group and the last group in the hierarchy doesn't have any child, do you want to delete this group or to keep it?

Example :


-group1
--group2
---group3

Do you want to delete group3 or not?

or :

- cube01
--group1
---group2

Do you want to delete group2 or not?


I think Maya will clean one time.... after that "oh damn this grp is empty! ok.. then // I will delete it..."

claydough

malcolm wrote: »

Anyone got a script that deletes groups with nothing in them or groups that have groups in them.

So any transform without any other node children ( shape node? etc ) other than transform nodes??

MoP

I usually found Optimise Scene Size works pretty well, provided you've deleted history.
If you don't delete history on all your objects, the transforms which appear "empty" in the outliner may still have connections to valid objects in your scene (eg. after a Combine operation, the previous transforms are now empty but still affect the position of the combined objects).

If you first Delete History on all objects (or Non-Deformer history to be safer), then do Optimise Scene Size, it should always get rid of all empty groups.

malcolm

Did a delete all by type history before running delete unused transform did not fix the problem.

sama.van

lol it starts to be confuse to me...

Do you have a scene example, or screen of your complete outliner ?
Then you could explain what are the node you would like to delete or not?

I also remember some bugs with the Optimize Scene Size in Maya but before the 2008 version.
What version are you using right now?

malcolm

Shawner that script works great thanks a lot man.

Shawner

Awsome good to here.

Toast

In 2011, running that script I get this error

# Error: TypeError: file <maya console> line 12: Object [] is invalid #

Shawner

try

import maya.cmds as cmds
 
transforms =  cmds.ls(type='transform')
deleteList = []
for tran in transforms:
    if cmds.nodeType(tran) == 'transform':
        children = cmds.listRelatives(tran, c=True) 
        if children == None:
            print '%s, has no childred' %(tran)
            deleteList.append(tran)
 
if len(deleteList) > 0:            
   cmds.delete(deleteList)

Toast

Perfect!

funshark

Never had any issue with the Optimize Scene Size.
If the empty groups don't disappear, that means they're connected to something and I recommend you to double check if it's something important or not.

melindasaur

Hey! Sorry to revive this age-old thread, but I imported a scene from sketchup and it comes with a ton of groups with one object under them. How could this script be modified to do this too? 

Lamont

You want to just delete empty groups or move them to one group?

melindasaur

I want to delete empty groups and delete groups with only one child. I want to preserve the hierarchy otherwise.