hohehohe2's OpenMaya tutorial     kotamuraa@yahoo.co.jp



1.Introduction

Since I couldn't find a tutorial of Maya API, I decided to make it myself.
Keep in mind that this document can contain errors, please let me know if you find one.


About this document

- Koichi Tamura(hohehohe2) holds the copyright of this document.
- You cannot quote a part of / all of this document without Koichi Tamura's permission
  in commercial use. If not commercial, you can quote it, but you need to specify that it is
  quoted from this document, and please let me know after you have quoted.
  It was because this document was supposed to be brushed up and become part of
  a book for Maya programming, but the project seems to be gone so feel freely to quote part/all of this.
- Koichi Tamura(hohehohe2) is not responsible for any information in this document.
- You can link to this page freely. You don't have to tell me when you link to this, but
  please send an email to kotamuraa @yahoo.co.jp if you want to make me happy :)


Knowledge you should already have

 You should already have the following knowledge.

- The usage of Maya
- Knowledge of C programming
- Knowledge of C++ programming (only a basic part of it will do)

 Here a basic part of C++ knowledge means the following things,

- Reference: How to use a reference as a parameter of a function.
- Class, object(instance), member, method
- Base class, derived class, virtual function and the usage of them
- The meaning of function overload, operator overload
   (As long as you know what it is, you don't have to be able to use them.)

 Especially hierarchy of classes is widely used in Open Maya, so you will need to
know it well.

 To read this document, MEL script is not so much requied, but if you don't know MEL,
I strongly recommend you to learn MEL first, since it is much easier.


 If you are going to study C++/VC++ for writing Maya plug-ins, you don't
have to study the following things.
(Of course you can study them, it will help you in many situations in your life)

-STL, container, algorithm, template
-Exceptions
-UML
-MFC, Win32 programming


In addition

 The word "Object" is used in many way and so often it's very confusing. I used the
following words instead. I made up some of these words.

- Maya's curve, surface, etc  -> scene object
- Object in C++ language -> class instance
- MObject(described later ) -> MObject
- Maya object(described later ) -> internal data (of Maya) or Maya's internal data



 I used these marks.

- (?): A bit uncertain
- (??): more uncertain
- (???): not sure at all. maybe, I hope, I wonder, ...
- (HELP)HELP ME PLEASE!!


Annotation

This document is for Windows Maya 4.0 and I used VC++ 6.0
I haven't used mac Maya and linux Maya but probably they are
not so different(?).


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