In maya rotate, have an input variable toggle for degrees, radians, etc

[Peteman12]

For some reason, we have to enter the rotates in cmds.rotate as '150deg' or something similar. Why? It would make more sense to me if we put in a number instead of a string and have an additional variable that sets it to degrees, radians, etc. This whole 'have to enter a number and string' thing is really unintuitive, since it's like the only commonly used function that does it

[tkaap2]

For workflows that use multiple unit types, it would indeed be useful to have a parameter-time flag.

But it's not the case that you -must- specify a unit. It's optional. You can certainly just pass in a numerical value. The `move` command works the same way -- you can specify units in the parameter values, but it's optional.

Below are some examples and workflow ideas that you can use in your scripts that might make life easier:

# All of these examples assume that you have this cube selected.
# I tend to run these scriptlets in chunks -- just a few lines at at time 
# to see the effect on the cube:
cmds.file(new=True,force=True)
cmds.polyCube()

# These will each rotate the cube by units in 
# the current angular unit, whichever it is set to:
# "degree" or "radian"
# 
cmds.rotate(1,0,0,r=True)
cmds.rotate(10,0,0,r=True)

# You can change the current angular unit.  Then the
# effect of using the raw numerical values will change
#
cmds.currentUnit(angle="degree")
cmds.currentUnit(angle="radian")


# These will each rotate the cube by the specified
# units.
cmds.rotate('1.0deg',0,0,r=True)
cmds.rotate('1.0rad',0,0,r=True)

# This is for lunatics, but it works.  This will
# rotate X by radians, Y by degrees, and Z by the current 
# angular unit.
cmds.rotate('.785rad','45deg',45)

# Some string formatting could be used to make it 
# convenient to only pass numerical values to the
# rotate command:
rotationValues = (1,2,3)
# degrees 
cmds.rotate("%fdeg"%rotationValues[0],"%fdeg"%rotationValues[1],"%fdeg"%rotationValues[2],r=True)
# radians
cmds.rotate("%frad"%rotationValues[0],"%frad"%rotationValues[1],"%frad"%rotationValues[2],r=True)


# You could even separate out the string formatting step:
def degreeRotations(value):
    return ("%fdeg"%val for val in value)
def radianRotations(value):
    return ("%frad"%val for val in value)    
# degrees 
cmds.rotate(*degreeRotations(rotationValues),r=True)
# radians
cmds.rotate(*radianRotations(rotationValues),r=True)


# You could also wrap the conversion logic, so that it
# operates with an input parameter
from math import degrees
def degreesRotationValues(value, inputIsDegrees=True):
    """ This method returns rotation values in degrees"""
    if inputIsDegrees:
        return ("%fdeg"%val for val in value)
    else:
        return ("%fdeg"%degrees(val) for val in value)

# Then your call to rotate does just work on an input
#  parameter toggle:
degreesValues = (45,45,45)
cmds.rotate(*degreesRotationValues(degreesValues),r=True)

radiansValues = (.785,.785,.785)
cmds.rotate(*degreesRotationValues(radiansValues,inputIsDegrees=False),r=True)


# You cold also rework this to query and store the 
# current angular unit, do your rotations purely as
# numerical values, then restore (if needed) the 
# previous angular unit.  This would avoid all
# string formatting steps:

# Store the current angular unit
currAngularUnit  = cmds.currentUnit(q=True,angle=True)
if currAngularUnit is not "deg":
    cmds.currentUnit(angle="degree")

# Rotate degree values directly, always in degrees
degreesValues = (45,45,45)
cmds.rotate(*degreesValues,r=True)

# Rotate radian values in degrees after converting them:
radiansValues = (.785,.785,.785)
degreesValues = map(degrees,radiansValues)
cmds.rotate(*degreesValues,r=True)
    
# Restore the angular unit
if currAngularUnit is not currAngularUnit:
    cmds.currentUnit(angle=currAngularUnit)

    

[Peteman12]

I don't know what to say. I've run into issues where not using '90deg' resulted in errors.