mel window example to catch users input

Over at Mayastation Annick Harmel-Tourneur demonstrates a little example of how to create a window to catch a user’s input in Autodesk Maya 2011, in this case the Render Settings startFrame, endFrame and byFrameStep values.

“Here is a little example on how to create a window to catch a user’s input, in this case the Render Settings startFrame, endFrame and byFrameStep values. The second step is to update those values in the Render Settings window with a global procedure.  The global proc is called with the -changeCommand (-cc) flag that is executing when the value of the field changes.

Here I am using these attributes as an example but really you can use most attributes that are integers.  Also note that I am using the control intFieldGrp even if there is only one field, this is because the intFieldGrp  has a label flag and the inField does not.”

this is the proc that updates the values:

global proc updateRenderSettings()
{
int $updatedSF = `intFieldGrp -q -value1 int1Items`;
setAttr defaultRenderGlobals.startFrame  $updatedSF;

int $updatedEF = `intFieldGrp-q -value1 int2Items`;
setAttr defaultRenderGlobals.endFrame  $updatedEF;

int $updatedBF = `intFieldGrp -q -value1 int3Items`;
setAttr defaultRenderGlobals.byFrameStep  $updatedBF;
}

this creates the window:

string $window = `window`;
columnLayout;
intFieldGrp -label “StartFrame” -value1 (`getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.startFrame`) -cc updateRenderSettings int1Items;
intFieldGrp -label “EndFrame” -value1 (`getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.endFrame`) -cc updateRenderSettings int2Items;
intFieldGrp -label “ByFrame” -value1 (`getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.byFrameStep`) -cc updateRenderSettings int3Items;
showWindow $window;