What programming language to use to combine models?

[Anonymous]

Hello EveryOne,

I am working on a simple application for learning purpose. 

I want to be able , as a user, to enter a sentence and depending on what it is, i have to chose from differents models that i already created and combine them.

For example :

    If i enter : "Red Car  Surrender By Trees" 

         The program have to go select the red Car Model and the Three Model and display them.

So My question is :

    - What Programming language should i use ? I am not sure that i am able to do it with MEL.

    - What the Best IDE to use ? (I have a MacBook Pro running on Yosemite)

Thanks Guys for taking time to read and to answer.

PS : I am sorry if the subject have already been discussed, I couldn't find anything. Please refer me to it if it is the case

[Anonymous]

If you are talking about Maya plug-in the languages is C++. You many even do not use any IDE 🙂 and but Notepad. On widnows the Visual Studio is used. Note you also need to learn Maya API. 

[j.pedlingham.2011]

I would definitely suggest programming in Python over C++.  Python is a widely used and simple programming language which uses a plugin called PyMel to perform the same commands. 

If you do go down the C++ route, I believe XCode can compile the libraries easily and the IDE can help out with function calls etc, without always having to refer to the documentation.  I don't know of many IDE's for Mac, as I am mainly windows dev, where Visual Studio is a dream in comparaison to XCode in my experience.

By your description I believe it should be doable in Python or MEL, although determining what is a car will be hard, and if you are using computer vision to determine this by rendering images and analysing, then OpenCV will help (there is a python plugin for that too, as well as C++).  If it is purely by naming convension in the scene, that part can definitely be done in MEL, Python or C++.  The colour can probably be analysed from the shader attributes in both Python and MEL.

You can use the inbuilt script editor in Maya to prototype your code, but most text editors will work with Python, Sublime or Atom are nice choices.