maybe take a closer look at the soup stuff... there are some great tutorials... http://www.tokeru.com/mayawiki/index.php?title=Soup http://mayaspiral.blogspot.com.au/ http://www.soup-dev.com/examples2_1.htm
I browsed though the MEL help docs, maybe because I don't understand on how to use, why it appeared intimidating. I was hoping there was a tutorial on how to setup and use.