I’m trhilled to be able to finally showcase, at least, some of our very own Python implementation into 3ds Max!
First off, our primary reason for writing our own, proprietary, Python connection to 3ds Max is Tactic by Southpaw Technology. An awesome asset management system entirely written in Python that I decided to invest in and integrate our tools and software packages into. Another reason for this connection, later came up, was the need for writing much more complex scripts with complex GUIs, since, as you probably know, a few functional lines of code are hardly enough in a modern, efficient, VFX production of today. 
The heart of our Python integration is dotNET from Microsoft. I can’t express myself enough how much I appretiate this framework! The brain of our Python integration is IronPython. Also a product from Microsoft, completely open source and free, which are two very important aspects for any pipeline tool in any production facility of any size. Not the price as much as the availability of the software. And with IronPython and Microsoft, I am certain that this piece of software will be around for years!
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I am very excited to present a very early development results for our own Python implementation in 3ds Max.
First a bit of an intro. At duber, I’ve setup everything around Python, the most versatile and powerful language I’ve ever seen. I felt in love with Python so much that it even influenced my decision to leave Fusion (my favourite compositing app) and dive into Nuke (my, now, most favourite compositing app). I even invested in a commercial data and asset management system, Tactic, that is entirely written in Python. I run tons of custom Python scripts to tie together programs such as Tactic, Nuke, FrameCycler, Photoshop etc… etc… But the last missing piece to the entire pipeline puzzle was 3ds Max.
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Yes! Once again, Blur studio showed how it’s supposed to be done.
They’ve released, or allowed their Eric Hulser to release, an updated version of their blurPython modules for 32bit and 64bit 3ds Max versions from Max 9 all the way up to 2009! And not only that. They’ve also provided libs and modules for tying up Python, 3ds Max and Qt together! This is massive news as I’ve been trying to get Python (concretely IronPython) work in 3ds Max but I’ve been constantly hitting road blocks until I finally bumped into Blur’s updated blurPython.
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Python 2.6 had been officially released on 01.09.2008! Some really great new features but still compatible with 2.5 code, which is great for slowly transitioning to the upcoming Python 3000.
Don’t hesitate a second and go for the download!
When I first started developing some tools, to speed up and aid our pipeline, in Maya I was furious to find out about Maya’s implemented GUI tools and methods. It was extremely unintuitive, very badly documented (especially regarding examples of the given object etc…) and heavily limiting. What I’d love to have in Maya was something similar to Max’s GUI objects I was used to.
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After reading a very interesting and helpful article about checksums and how practical they are for comparing large datasets over at Adam Pletcher’s Tech Art Tiki blog, I was immediately interested in such methods as I’m doing some R&D on data management in a larger creative environment and need such a feature. Unfortunately, MAXScript natively doesn’t support MD5 hashes (or any other kinds of hashes), so you’re pretty much stuck with just a few options.
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I’ve been recently doing some R&D on MySQL databases and connection through Python in Maya as well as Python in Max (through blurPython library), but I couldn’t seem to have found a way to connect to a MySQL database via ODBC. The problem lied in OLE methods as they’re not both much documented in MAXScript reference and they’re tied to the operating system, not Max directly. But thankfully, I bumped into a solution today, out of a blue 
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I find myself scripting in Maya more and more often. As I’ve expressed many times already, I really love and appretiate Python’s way of dealing with things, so having this language available in Maya is a blessing. The most beautiful part is when software actually does all the hard and annoying work for you Scripting in Maya using Python hadn’t been designed the way it should be. Unfortunately, Python only serves as a “wrapper” around MEL commands and MEL architecture. Fortunately there are attempts at simplifying Python scripting in Maya, such as PyMEL from Luma Pictures (which is a studio I feel honored to cooperate with on The Nutcracker: The Untold Story), which is a fantastic “plug-in” for any Maya TD! which was, not surprisingly, done solely through Python itself A fantastic demonstration of Python’s power. However, PyMEL isn’t the topic for this short post, maybe later, when I get more familiar with it and gain more experience using it.
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The more time you spend developing some more complex tools and code, the more you start appretiating all the open-source tools and add-ons you can get. Thankfully, Max and its MAXScript language is very widely used throughout the CG community, so, some times you don’t even have to start developing your own tools from scratch, you can get either the whole package from sites like ScriptSpot or at least build your tools up on somebody else’s script. However, there are certain limitations that even a huge community, such as the one Max has, won’t be of much help.
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Interestingly enough, when I started looking into extending my technical skills and knowledge beyond 3ds Max itself at first I got a bit frustrated. The reason was I thought (as probably many other technical artists out there, based on many discussions I read) that I spent years developing some scripting and technical skills to find out they were useless and I’ll have to learn something entirely different in order to stay at the cutting edge and still being competitive. Now while 3ds Max isn’t a factor here, it’s just a platform anyways, I dived into Maya recently and faced a, seemingly, difficult decision: do I go the MEL way or do I learn Python (available in Maya since 8.5)? The decision turned out to be petty simple! I’ll learn both! As I devoured the user reference files, some tutorials and some books, I found out that once you learn one scripting language syntax and logic, picking up any other (similar) language is quite easy.
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