I’ve seen many references to .NET being used around these forums, mainly via The Godfather (aka RobG). If there isnt already a thread out there for this, I’m very interested to know how this fits into your workflows.
For example, we are a Python/Maya based Tech Art operation. Would learning and using .NET fit alongside this, or be more of a replacement? What the benefits for adopting .NET into our workflow? We don’t have a specific need for it, but I’m very curious if/how it could help us out.
I’m sure I could research this myself, but better to get firsthand summaries from ppl in the know, right?
I would think of using .NET where Python fails you, for instance when dealing with direct connections to SharePoint, when you need a better XML reader/writer (dom.minidom is teh sux), or when you need OS level features such as a fileSystemWatcher.
While you could do much/most of your Maya UI and other code using pythonet to marry .NET to Maya, you are really better off with a less buggy, more full featured system for “regular” tasks. Having said that, there are some things that you just can’t do with either the built in Maya tools, QT, or both. This is where you might want to look at .NET.
Even when you use .NET, you may only use it for one small piece of a task, and keep the majority of your code in “vanilla” Python.
In addition to what Brett has said, if you have a game toolset that is based in .Net it is quite easy to have those tools intergrated within Maya or harness that code for IO and common functions.
We started to use the game editors .net classes to read and write all our cinematic files and optimised function for game asset simulation within Maya.
I like that .net enhanced a lot of UI elements in 3dsmax. I use it to provide dynamic menus, complex tables, and greater control over icons. It has helped me to provide a better user experience for our artists.
btribble: – you should try python’s celement.tree – its fast and has a much much smaller memory footprint compared to minidom.
[QUOTE=JasonB;8063]
btribble: – you should try python’s celement.tree – its fast and has a much much smaller memory footprint compared to minidom.[/QUOTE]
+1, not to derail, but yeah, i switched to cElementTree and Amara a little while back and have pretty much forgotten about minidom, hehe.
[QUOTE=dbsmith;8057]I’ve seen many references to .NET being used around these forums, mainly via The Godfather (aka RobG). If there isnt already a thread out there for this, I’m very interested to know how this fits into your workflows.
For example, we are a Python/Maya based Tech Art operation. Would learning and using .NET fit alongside this, or be more of a replacement? What the benefits for adopting .NET into our workflow? We don’t have a specific need for it, but I’m very curious if/how it could help us out.
I’m sure I could research this myself, but better to get firsthand summaries from ppl in the know, right? [/QUOTE]
You’ll find .NET much better for UI’s and also for integration with any other .NET apps. .NET won’t replace python in your pipeline, but it can certainly augment it. It is very useful to know a language like C# just as it is useful to know a language like python.
You think that you don’t have a need for C# right now, but learning it can make you find needs and areas where it can be used to great benefit, the same way that knowing python has been very useful for some things that would have otherwise been very tedious using C#.
