Does anybody know how to make a countdown timer in Maya?

[Anonymous]

Does anybody know how to make a countdown timer in Maya? Your help is appreciated!

[mspeer · Accepted solution]

Hi!

Use Type.

Inside Node "type": Generator -> ... (Python Expression should be the best way)

[hyphenate]

Would you care to elaborate on what exactly this python expression would be to generate a basic timer?

All of the research I've done yields python scripts that have multiple functions, and many even external callbacks to do this (not inside of Maya), but there is simply zero documentation out there that I could find on a self-contained python expressions that would be the solution here.

Any insight you could share would be fantastic.

Thanks!

[mspeer]

Hi

Here a simple example:

10 - cmds.currentTime(query=True)

Another simple solution would be to use the "Frame Number" mode and modify the Time input.

[andymc4997]

Hello @mspeer, 

I'm trying to animate both a digital timer and a temperature reading. Would you care to please give a couple examples in Python for how I might go about that?

I need the temp to not have a decimal place, and the timer to be standard minutes : seconds. 

Both readings count up to 400 and 4:00 respectively from a certain frame to the last.

Thank you!