Bana

Bana is a set of extensions for Autodesk Maya's Python API.

The Maya's Python API is often a good choice over the commands layer whenever performances and robustness are valued. But because of its overall poor design, it is not uncommon that some fundamental functionalities are lacking out of the box and/or require too much boilerplate to get rolling.

Other gotchas to be expected include methods that became too daunting to use after porting in the worst possible way the API from C++ to Python, undocumented behaviours of certain features where error trialing is everything that is left, and methods throwing an exception when returning None would have been more appropriate.

Bana aims at reducing these shortcomings to provide a more friendly, predictable, and efficient developing environment.

Using the monkey patching package gorilla, new methods prefixed with bn are inserted within some classes from the maya.OpenMaya* modules, thus extending their functionalities while making these new methods feel as if they were built-in into Maya.

Since performances are a primary reason for using the API, a set of benchmarks built with the help of the package revl helps to ensure that these extensions remain as fast as possible.

Notes

Bana extends on Maya's Python API 1.0 rather than 2.0 because the latter version seems to be still incomplete. That being said, it is encouraged to use the API 2.0 whenever possible since it provides a much more Pythonic interface with increased performances.

Bana does not aim at making the API more Pythonic. This could in some cases impact the performances, which goes against Bana's goal of keeping things fast.

Bana does aim at following Maya's API philosophy by providing low-level extensions that are not specific to a domain (e.g.: rigging).

Features

• easy retrieval of nodes from the scene.
• robust and predictable specification for pattern matching with wildcards.
• abstract away the usage of the maya.OpenMaya.MScriptUtil class.
• performances as a top priority.

Usage

>>> import bana
>>> bana.initialize()
>>> from maya import OpenMaya
>>> # Retrieve a transform node named 'root'.
>>> root = OpenMaya.MFnTransform.bnGet(pattern='*|root')
>>> # Recursively iterate over all the DAG nodes child of 'root'.
>>> for node in root.bnFindChildren():
...     print(node)
>>> # Find all the mesh nodes in the scene containing the word 'Shape' but
... # not belonging to any namespace.
>>> for node in OpenMaya.MFnMesh.bnFind(pattern='*|*Shape*'):
...     print(node)

See the Tutorial section from the documentation for more detailed examples and explanations on how to use Bana.

Documentation

Read the documentation online at bana.readthedocs.io or check its source in the doc directory.

Author

Christopher Crouzet <christophercrouzet.com>

Thanks

• Justin Israel for discovering that multiple instances pointing to a same Maya object return different hash values.