ANN: Python cgkit v2.0.0alpha7 & Maya/Python 0.9.3

[Matthias Baas]

The seventh alpha release of cgkit2 and v0.9.3 of the Maya/Python
package is available at http://cgkit.sourceforge.net


What is it?
-----------

The Python Computer Graphics Kit is an Open Source software package
containing a collection of Python modules, plugins and utilities that
are meant to be useful for any domain where you have to deal with 3D
data of any kind, be it for visualization, creating photorealistic
images, Virtual Reality or even games.

Currently, the entire kit consists of the following parts:

- The Python package "cgkit" that extends Python with 3D-related
functionality.

- The Maya plugin "sourcepy" that integrates the Python interpreter
into Maya, and the accompanying Python package "maya" that makes Maya
functionality available in Python.

- A collection of small stand-alone utilities written in Python, MEL
or MaxScript.


What's new?
-----------

cgkit:

- The license of cgkit has changed from LGPL to a MPL/GPL/LGPL
tri-license. The Maya/Python package is available under the MPL.

- The built-in preprocessor has been improved so that common
preprocessor directives are supported. This means the slparams module
can now parse RenderMan shaders that use simple macros or include
files without having to fall back to an external preprocessor.

- other smaller bugfixes and enhancements (see changelog)

Maya/Python:

- The MEL command "python" has been renamed to "py".

- There are now 260 classes from the Maya SDK available. This is about
85% of the Maya 7 SDK. The newly wrapped classes mainly consist of the
message classes.

- The MUserEventMessage can also be used to communicate with C++
plug-ins.

- The number of "dead" methods in the api module (i.e. methods that
have  been wrapped but that were not callable in Python) has been
reduced. These are methods that, for example, take pointers as
arguments or return values by reference and that cannot be dealt with
in an entirely automatic fashion. There are still such methods left,
so let me know if you stumble across one of those cases.
 
- Improved string handling in the mel module.

- Multi-threading support. This means you can create a new thread in
Python and this thread keeps running even when the py or pySource MEL
command that was used to execute the Python code has terminated. This
functionality is used for the new "remote" functionality (see below).

- New sub-package "remote" that allows you to execute any MEL command
from external scripts. This means you can control Maya from Python
scripts that run outside Maya or even on a different machine.

- Writing plug-ins in Python has become more safe as Python exceptions
are now caught in the proxy wrapper classes where the traceback is
printed and a status code of kFailure is returned to Maya.



For more information, visit:

http://cgkit.sourceforge.net


Feedback is always welcome...

- Matthias -