Automating the Anim Picker Process More

[gwall]

Hello,

I have a question related to the Anim Picker and how I could automate some simple processes related to opening up the picker for a character.

I have a request to have the picker menu, with the characters picker file loaded automatically with a custom shelf button. Now I saw that this is pretty much already possible with,

import mgear
from mgear import anim_picker
anim_picker.load()

But that is only if you already have the Picker Object loaded in the scene.
If an animation scene has a old version of the picker object node in it already, what happens if there is a new version of the .pkr file?

Does it read in the newest file if I call,

import mgear
from mgear import anim_picker
anim_picker.load()

Or do I need to delete the existing picker object, then start over to have the most up to date picker?
If this is true, what would be the right way to call in a pre-determined .pkr path into the anim_picker.load()? There would be more steps in this process as well, I can’t seem to find all the functions to call when I look in the anim_picker gitHub.

Thanks for any help!
Grant

[Rafael]

Hello @gwall

Thank you for asking about the anim_picker. Perhaps I may not be understanding the question correctly. But if you have an old version of a picker in your scene and you wish to update from a file that is newer/different. Than you would can simply delete the existing scene picker node and import the new one from the file and give it the same name as the previously delete one.

Also, you do not actually need to delete the old one, you can import the new .pkr file and give it a difference name. In case you wanted to make comparisons between the two versions.

The language on the naming, or functions, could be a bit clearer, admittedly. So we can try to fix that over time. because anim_picker.load() should really be anim_picker.show(). To give an example.

The need to delete the existing picker comes from the fact we do not have any “updater” logic to merge an existing scene picker with another picker from file. Because that can be a lot of dev time and something subject to preference per studio.

If you need a code snippet to load from file and give it a name, let me know. I can put together something for you post morning coffee.

[gwall]

Hey Rafael,

Thanks for getting back to me.

What would be really nice is to have a way to create a PICKER_DATA node with your anim_picker code. I can’t seem to find that in the git repo anywhere.

I know this is all possible through the UI, but if I could just tie it all into a shelf button that would be nice.
What I need is to:

Load
Select file, we already have a pre-determined file to use.
‘Load Picker’ with a set name

Then from there I can use the,
‘anim_picker.load()’

[chrislesage]

Did you see this thread? These are all the commands I found for automating the picker when I was researching this. I don’t know if this does exactly what you are describing, but maybe it can help?

Load .pkr File Using Python

I’m new to the Anim Picker. I do not know if there is a best way. I am almost certain there must be a more straight-forward way. But this might give you some hints. Disclaimer: This is not a script meant to run from start to finish. It is a collection of the commands you can use to create a picker node, and read the data from a file. Use only the commands you need. import pymel.core as pm from mgear import anim_picker # If you already have picker nodes in the scene, you can find them this way…

[gwall]

Hey Chris,
This stuff was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!