copy

A big part of how I started learning Python was to find out ways to port my old MEL scripts into Python. It’s always easier writing it the second time, not only because I already have the logic of the script down but because Python is a way, way better language than MEL. Seriously, I can hardly stand to look at MEL anymore. Anyways, one of the simpler scripts I wrote when I was starting off with MEL was a copy/paste script for the channel box. Maya is one of the most complex programs I’ve ever encountered and yet there is no built-in way to copy and paste attributes between objects. Whatever.

The script was really handy, but because I was really new at MEL it didn’t copy and paste between separate instances of Maya, and it only copied transform channels. This new one in Python takes advantage of the pickle module to store variables to a temporary file on the user’s hard drive, and retrieve them later when running the paste operation. Here’s what the code looks like:
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