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Synopsis

pfxstrokes([filename=string], [postCallback=boolean], [selected=boolean])

Note: Strings representing object names and arguments must be separated by commas. This is not depicted in the synopsis.

pfxstrokes is NOT undoable, NOT queryable, and NOT editable.

This command will loop through all the Paint Effects strokes, including pfxHair nodes, and write the current state of all the tubes to a file. For normal stroke nodes tubes must be ON in the brush or there will be no output. For pfxHair nodes there will always be output, but the format is different than for stroke nodes(however one can assign a brush with tubes = ON to a pfxHair node, in which case it will output the same format as strokes). The general file format is ASCII, using commas to separate numerical values and newlines between blocks of data. The format used for pfxHair nodes presents the hair curves points in order from root to tip of the hair. The hairs follow sequentially in the following fashion: NumCvs pointX,pointY,pointZ, normalX,normalY,normalZ, width, colorR,colorG,colorB, paramU pointX,pointY,pointZ, normalX,normalY,normalZ, width, colorR,colorG,colorB, paramU etc... NumCvs pointX,pointY,pointZ, normalX,normalY,normalZ, width, colorR,colorG,colorB, paramU etc.. The format used to output files for brushes with tubes=ON is more complex. The tubes can branch and the order the segments are written is the same order they are drawn in. Slowly drawing a tall grass brush in the paint effects panel can help to illustrate the order the segments will appear in the file. New tubes can start "growing" before others are finished. There is no line for "NumCvs". Instead all data for each segment appears on each line. The data on each line is the same as passed into the paint effects runtime function. See the argument list of paintRuntimeFunc.mel for the order and a description of these parameters. The parameters match up exactly in the order they appear on a line of the output file with the order of arguments to this function. If one wishes to parse the output file and connect the segments together into curves the branchId, parentId and siblingCnt parameters can help when sorting which segment connects to which line. Using the -postCallback option will write out the tubes data after it has been proessed by the runTime callback.

Return value

None

Keywords

paint, effects, strokes, callback

Flags

filename, postCallback, selected
Long name (short name) Argument types Properties
selected(sl) boolean create
Only loop through the selected strokes.
postCallback(pc) boolean create
Output information to the file after the Runtime Callback MEL function has been invoked. The default is to output the information prior to the callback.
filename(fn) string create
The output file.
Flag can appear in Create mode of command Flag can appear in Edit mode of command
Flag can appear in Query mode of command Flag can have multiple arguments, passed either as a tuple or a list.

Python examples

import maya.cmds as cmds

cmds.pfxstrokes( fn='/tmp/output_file' )