How to show all cameras except the default ones

Coding
1

This may be slightly stupid but I wanted to ask how do I list out all cameras (either imported/created and hidden or not) with the exception of the default ones?

I tried out persistentNodes where in the documentation, it states Returns persistent nodes, which are nodes that stay in the Maya session after a file > new

allCams = cmds.ls(type='camera', pn = 1)

However, if I used it, it will not show anything. Should I change it to pn = 0, this time round there are results but it is inluding in the persp/front/side/top which is not what I wanted.

Any ideas?

Many thanks in advance!

2

This works in Mel:

ls( "-pn", "-type", "camera" );
3

I am going for a python based coding, but for some reasons, it is not working for me.

I have found a solution and that is

[cam for cam in cmds.listRelatives(cmds.ls(cameras=1),parent=1) if cam not in ['front','persp','side','top']]
4

Ah, I misunderstood your question. Thought you wanted only the persistent cameras…

In Mel, the ‘pn’ flat is not a boolean. Its mere existence means you want it to be active.
So you can do:

ls( "-pn", "-type", "camera" );

but you cannot do:

ls( "-pn", "true", "-type", "camera" );

or

ls( "-pn", "1", "-type", "camera" );

which might be the reason why you cannot invert its action in python with

allCams = cmds.ls( persistentNodes=0, type='camera' )
5

I couldn’t get the -persistentNodes flag to return anything for me, using mel or python.

The default cameras are marked as “startup cameras” by maya. This attribute of a camera can be changed, so if someone has messed with it, or set other cameras as a startup camera, then you will get different results. That being said it’s the most consistent method of returning the default cameras that I know of aside from hard-coding the names.

nonStartup = [c for c in cmds.ls(cameras=True) if not cmds.camera(c, q=True, startupCamera=True)]
6

[QUOTE=sciloop;25678]Ah, I misunderstood your question. Thought you wanted only the persistent cameras…

In Mel, the ‘pn’ flat is not a boolean. Its mere existence means you want it to be active.
So you can do:

ls( "-pn", "-type", "camera" );

[/QUOTE]

Hi sciloop, try out the mel code, but I am not getting anything out of it

[QUOTE=capper;25713]I couldn’t get the -persistentNodes flag to return anything for me, using mel or python.

The default cameras are marked as “startup cameras” by maya. This attribute of a camera can be changed, so if someone has messed with it, or set other cameras as a startup camera, then you will get different results. That being said it’s the most consistent method of returning the default cameras that I know of aside from hard-coding the names.

nonStartup = [c for c in cmds.ls(cameras=True) if not cmds.camera(c, q=True, startupCamera=True)]

[/QUOTE]

Hi capper, as mentioned in my first post, the persistentNodes also does not seems to be working in python for me… But I never knew that there is a flag called ‘startupCamera’… Works great in my cause as well.

Just wondering where or how do you derive the ‘startupCamera’?

7

startupCamera is an attribute that can be set on a camera. From the docs:

A startup camera is marked undeletable and implicit. This flag can be used to set or query the startup state of a camera. There must always be at least one startup camera.

You can remove the startupCamera setting from any of the default (persp, front, etc) cameras, and make any user-created cameras a startupCamera. Because of that it’s not a guarantee that you’ll get the 4 default ones, but it’s probably your best shot outside of hardcoding the names.

8

[QUOTE=capper;25731]startupCamera is an attribute that can be set on a camera. From the docs:

You can remove the startupCamera setting from any of the default (persp, front, etc) cameras, and make any user-created cameras a startupCamera. Because of that it’s not a guarantee that you’ll get the 4 default ones, but it’s probably your best shot outside of hardcoding the names.[/QUOTE]

Hi capper, thanks a lot of the information. My bad on this as I must have missed reading it in the camera docs (overwhelmed by the list of flags it have) and this is definetely better than the hardcoded ones that I did.

Cheers! :slight_smile: