Hi,
It used to be that using Expressions and Referencing in Maya did not gel very well. This led to the general advice to avoid expressions in production rigs. Does anyone know if this is still the case with recent versions of Maya?
Sune
Hey Sune,
I’ve not had issues with expressions in production rigs. It’s always been a matter of speed in that node based setups are usually faster than expressions. So I avoid them as much as possible. For fast testing or knocking something out fast, they can be great. I could see there being an issue if the expression wasn’t self contained to that file (i.e. referring to non local assets or nodes) but as long as you’re careful there you should be okay.
expressions might break with namespaces though generally it looks to its own local namespace.
There is the speed advantage of using nodes, as well as it’s easier to map out and deconstruct a node system than it is to go and read a lot of tiny expressions.
[QUOTE=jjburton;18737]Hey Sune,
I’ve not had issues with expressions in production rigs. It’s always been a matter of speed in that node based setups are usually faster than expressions. So I avoid them as much as possible. For fast testing or knocking something out fast, they can be great. I could see there being an issue if the expression wasn’t self contained to that file (i.e. referring to non local assets or nodes) but as long as you’re careful there you should be okay.[/QUOTE]
There were problems back in the day (like Maya 7 on Linux), where names in expressions would not update, when referenced. So this and speed of evaluation, means I’ve just always avoided them. But a co-worker wanted to use them.
Not sure I could even write one my-self these days 
[QUOTE=dgovil;18747]expressions might break with namespaces though generally it looks to its own local namespace.
There is the speed advantage of using nodes, as well as it’s easier to map out and deconstruct a node system than it is to go and read a lot of tiny expressions.[/QUOTE]
Thanks, Did you see this happen with recent versions of Maya?
I wasn’t rigging yet in 7.0:) I have been using expressions in production since about 8.5 and haven’t run into what you’re saying.
Had one more thought that can be tedious. If a node or object’s name changes in an expression Maya does it’s best to keep the connection but it makes the expression pretty unreadable as it assigns an indexed connection matrix in the expression itself. I’ve never dug into trying to figuring out if that’s easily repairable or not.
Nodes are probably your best bet whenever possible.
[QUOTE=jjburton;18753]I wasn’t rigging yet in 7.0:) I have been using expressions in production since about 8.5 and haven’t run into what you’re saying.
Had one more thought that can be tedious. If a node or object’s name changes in an expression Maya does it’s best to keep the connection but it makes the expression pretty unreadable as it assigns an indexed connection matrix in the expression itself. I’ve never dug into trying to figuring out if that’s easily repairable or not.
Nodes are probably your best bet whenever possible.[/QUOTE]
Thanks Guys