how to run 2 mel script on startup from different sources

Question

How to run Mel script on start up from different source, since i tried to use 2 paths in my maya.env to source script on start up, it only takes one first path and another path doesn't get activated. MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = $USER_SCRIPT_PATH:$MAYA_SCRIPT_BASE/scripts/test:$MAYA_SCRIPT_BASE/scripts/unsupported Catch here is one path is fixed since its based on project i am working

MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = $USER_SCRIPT_PATH:$MAYA_SCRIPT_BASE/scripts/test:$MAYA_SCRIPT_BASE/scripts/unsupported

Can you explain how it works? I don't understand the recursion

Answer 1

There are few ways you can go about doing this.

1) using the Maya.env file.

USER_SCRIPT_PATH1=C:/myscripts/whatever/path1
USER_SCRIPT_PATH2=C:/myscripts/whatever/path2
MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH=$MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH;$USER_SCRIPT_PATH1;USER_SCRIPT_PATH2

This will manipulate the environment variables directly, on startup. The thing to note here is in Windows, the semicolon ";" is used to separate the paths. In all other platforms the colon is used ":".

2) You could use a userSetup.mel file in your Maya script folder to setup your environments, by adding something like this:

$path1 = "C:/myscripts/whatever/path1";
$path2 = "C:/myscripts/whatever/path2";
string $newScriptPath = $path1 + ";" +  $path2 + ";" +`getenv "MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH"`;
putenv "MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH" $newScriptPath;

3) Alternatively if you just want to source a couple of files on startup, then you could just add these lines in your userSetup.mel file:

$script1 = "C:/myscripts/whatever/script1.mel";
$script2 = "C:/myscripts/whatever/script2.mel";
source $script1;
source $script2;

Check these links for more depth: http://www.jonasavrin.com/2010/08/15/maya-env-configuration-of-variables-using-usersetup-mel/

http://www.djx.com.au/blog/customizing-maya/

Hope this clears things up.

Answer 2

The example is trying to insert a new directory in from of the existing $MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH. Maya will search the directories in order, so you can use that trick to control which version of a script is loaded. This will also let you have a different userSetup.py or userSetup.mel (Maya will use the first one it finds)

@kartikg's got good options if you want to change the way your maya is configured so it always starts using a particular set of search paths and scripts, which is what most users want. However if you have to switch between different projects with different tools you may need to use either modules or environment variables.

Modules, also add things to your maya's paths. You can give each module it's own directory and user setup (modules can also include their own bitmaps and plugins as well).

http://techartsurvival.blogspot.com/2014/01/mayas-mildy-magical-modules.html http://around-the-corner.typepad.com/adn/2012/07/distributing-files-on-maya-maya-modules.html

Multiple modules can exist side by side, although that can be confusing if you have similarly named scripts in different modules. Modules all live in the directory specified by the environment variable $MAYA_MODULE_PATH; you could use the tricks in @kartikg's post or below to change that too.

Another option is just to set the environment variables in your shell before launching maya. This is handy if you have to hop between different projects with different environment. In bash you can do this in an alias in your .bashrc file:

 alias proj1="export MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH=path/to/scripts:$MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH; maya;"

which would let you call 'proj1' from your bash shell and get a maya with /path/to/scripts as the first search path. You can maintain multiple aliases with different paths and they can run side by side. In windows you'd do the same thing with batch file that used the SET command to set the paths.