Exporting .ma file to FBX in command line(Mac OS : Maya 2013:MEL scrpts/Python)

Coding
1

hi,

My setUp - Mac OS X, Maya 2013

1)I have a lot of Maya files of extension .ma and I am going to write a script to export all of them to FBX format.

2)And for some of the files, I want particular selections to be exported from each file. So, certain parameters need to be passed to the command line I guess.

My initial thought was to call subprocess.Popen constructor to create a child process which does the conversion for each .ma file coming out of a list of .ma files. but I got another suggestion that involving the pYTHON script through mayapy and the below code was suggested:

basic psuedo-code:
CODE:

import maya.standalone
import maya.cmds as cmds
import maya.mel as mm
import glob

maya.standalone.initialize( name=‘python’ )

def exportFBX():
for f in glob.iglob("/chosenDir//.ma"):
cmds.file (f, force=True, open=True)
#Insert any filter code here
mm.eval(“FBXExport -f %s.fbx;”%(f.rpartition(’.ma’)[0]))

exportFBX()

To run : mayapy this.py

##############
The initial goal was :
Recursively traverse a series of directories

  • Locate all .ma (Maya) files within
  • Export those files to FBX format using varying options depending on the directory path. (animations, models, environments, etc.)
  • The varying options will mostly require particular selections to be exported from each file, but may have FBX-specific settings.

#############

So, even if you tell me the commands to do the export from command line in mAC os x, then I can automate the rocess using blog or os.walk and invoking this command for each .ma file.

Thanks,
Miku

2

Hi Miku, what do you want to know? It seems you’re on the right track.

3

[QUOTE=Rob Galanakis;17741]Hi Miku, what do you want to know? It seems you’re on the right track.[/QUOTE]

Hi Rob,

I wanted to invoke the command from subprocess.Popen class for the conversion process.
So, I want the command from MacOS point fo view which exports .ma files to FBX.
Because, I am not comfortable with the other method proposed by my colleague(You can see in my previous post).

Thanks,

4

You can just launch a maya process with a python script (see the docs on commandline flags), which can import/run some function (‘import mymodule; mymodule.Run()’) to export the fbx files. You’d need to use subprocess.Popen to launch the maya exe, like:
subprocess.call([‘mayabatch.exe’, ‘-script’, ‘“import batchexport;batchexport.Run(%r)”’ % rootfolder])
There are more complex options- so that you could do all your logic in pure-python and then just tell Maya exactly what to do- but they are significantly more complex and not worth it for this case, especially if you’re just starting out with IPC.