Cookin with Lithium
thedenrei posted in Uncategorized on September 18th, 2006
I’ve been making progress on my MEL level editor system. Things have been slow going for many reasons: I’m back in school now, many of my friends have returned to Madison… but more than this I’m a stinky coder. One of my strengths as a member of this team is an ability to get really consumed by a project, putting in every spare moment just because I really love what I’m doing. This current stuff is definitely interesting, edifying and worth while, but I can’t seem to get the kind of momentum which I usually depend on to allow me to work quickly. Never the less, my progress has been consistent. I’ve got a simple GUI with little icons and such to execute what I’ve written so far. The automated process of importing and cataloging external files is complete, with a small particular problem I have yet to resolve.
Most of my time is spent exploring and testing many different ways of approaching the same task, to find the one which is most suitable. Maya is extremely open ended and forgiving in terms of allowing you to tackle a problem however you are most comfortable. This is excellent when you just want to automate a single task (which is how I’m used to using MEL). However, when your system gets deeper, it becomes imperative to do things in ways which are more or less harmonious with Maya’s core design philosophies. By this I mean storing particular types of information in the ways Maya likes it to be stored, organizing things how Maya likes things to be organized. MEL has tons of tools and functionality available, and its important to keep your work compatible with what already exists. I have a pretty solid idea of what I want to end up with, which has been very helpful for planning how things should work now.
As I mentioned, this work is edifying and an important step, but I am already very much itching to get back to just modeling and making stuff.
Oh, I named the system “Lithium”. I hope nothing similar is already named that. A few quick google searches suggest not. Wikipedia explains that lithium can be used to fight mania, depression and bipolar disorder (I’ll mention here that I personally have strong problems with any kind of mind/mood altering supplement such as anti-psychotics in all but the most extreme cases). It can be a component in channeling/harnessing large amounts of power, as in lithium batteries or thermonuclear weaponry. It is also a catalyst for chemical reactions.
Lithium does not create simplicity out of complexity, but offers a different way of experiencing complexity which is easier for a mind to deal with. When given the proper situation it can take silent, dorment forces and empower them to many times their original potential. This is all rather dramatic for a couple of amature MEL scripts, but with Maya as my katamari, I intend to keep it rolling and growing as my tools change, and will eventually collect all the elements of my workflow.
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