Well Maya's slow implementation of Python followed the natural progression
based on their MEL their scripting interface. Wrapping the commands into
python was cheap and effective. Alternative would've been equivalent to
building a new SDK framework from scratch which wouldve delayed the
introduction of python into Maya.
Maya's cpp API doest lends itself wall to object oriented programming
either. The original straight swig bindings are pretty uncomfortable to use
in a Python environment. Their new version is better but missing a fair bit
in functionality and thus the adoption is pretty low.
This is where pyMEL came to play which wrapped the python commands and the
python API hooks into an object oriented framework. However there is a
performance hit that comes along because all of the sudden you are
generating hundreds of python objects while doing simple operations that
would otherwise be blazing fast in MEL or python commands.
This performance hit is the reason why Im currently in the process of
rewriting an object oriented API for Maya I've been using istead of pyMEL
into C++ and exposing it back via boost bindings. It's a time consuming
process but so far I've been seeing a significant improvement with some
tests showing execution time drop by more than half, that makes me hopeful
that this effort won't go to waste!
I'd be happy to share my experiences in case anyone is serious about doing
the bindings for Softimage.
On Monday, September 3, 2012, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:
> Which is ironic.
> MEL and their first python implementation were so FUBAR that they could
> just do (buy, really) what needed doing by introducing a completely
> separate way of working.
>
> They had no object orientation or coherence worth speaking of outside of
> the cpp API before then, so even with all the gaps it was hugely well
> received.
>
> In XSI there's a better track record, which means you will have to give up
> something, but at this point there's enough goodness in the CPP API, beside
> just the performance aspect, that I reckon it'd be worth doing.
> Not to mention the viewport API in pyton would be cool to have, like Maya
> manips are (somewhat) accessible through the bindings, even if you can
> segfault maya hard every other minute when working with them :p
>
> On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Ahmidou Lyazidi
> <ahmidou....@gmail.com<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'ahmidou....@gmail.com');>
> > wrote:
>
>> Maya has both, standard scripting and cpp API binding, which is a good
>> thing!
>>
>
--
Technical Director @ DreamWorks Animation
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