Notes in building UI in Maya

Hello,

I thought these couple notes on making ui's would be helpful.

Separating tab code into different functions so just removing a single line will remove the tab from ui.

Testing ui buttons with a simple print, this way can test ui even if backend tool needs changing.


The key things for tabs is, a tabLayout line, and a setParent line after tabs. Most of the code below is just formating the window. Using form gave me lots of control over where I wanted to put things in the ui.

Here's how the ui looked.







Here was the make gui function:

global proc makeGui()
{
    //setup up title for gui
    string $titleWindow = "Skinning Tool (c) Anozie 2012";

    string $mainWindowName = "ToolMainWindow";
  
    //delete window pref for this window if it exists
    if(`windowPref -exists $mainWindowName`){ windowPref -remove $mainWindowName;}
    
    if( `window -exists $mainWindowName`  )
    {
        deleteUI $mainWindowName;
    }
    window -t $titleWindow -width 400 -height 260 -sizeable false $mainWindowName;
    
    
    //optional add tabs here
    string $tabs = `tabLayout`; //needed before can add tabs
    tabGetWeight_ui($mainWindowName);
    tabGetWorldPosition_ui($mainWindowName);
    tabGetVtx_ui($mainWindowName);
    tabPutWeight_ui($mainWindowName);
    
    showWindow $mainWindowName;
}

and here is an example of a tab, all the others have similar look.

The names for things in tab need to be different for different tabs.
This was a little confusing for me, so here is what i mean by above.

This here works:
if one tab had

textFieldGrp -l $name objectName;

and another tab had

textFieldGrp -l $name hithere;

but this wouldn't work
if one tab had

textFieldGrp -l $name objectName;

and another tab had

textFieldGrp -l $name objectName;

/////given a window add this tab 
/*
needs arguments
string  name of window
*/
global proc tabGetWeight_ui(string $winName)
{
    
    if( `window -exists $winName`  )
    {
        
        //what are the labels
        string $titleTab = "get weight";
        string $titleButton = "find weights";
        string $t_getWeightVtx_TextField = "vertices";
        string $t_getWeightJnt_TextField = "joints";


        
        //set up format for gui
        string $form = `formLayout -numberOfDivisions 320 $titleTab`;
        
        textFieldGrp -l $t_getWeightVtx_TextField getWeightVtx_TextField;
        textFieldGrp -l $t_getWeightJnt_TextField getWeightJnt_TextField;
        button -label $titleButton -command "getWeights()" getButton;
        
        //how should things be positioned
        formLayout -edit 
        -attachForm getWeightVtx_TextField "top" 30
        -attachForm getWeightJnt_TextField "top" 70
        -attachForm getButton "top" 190 
        -attachForm getButton "left" 10
        $form;
        
        
        setParent $winName;//add tab to arg window
    }
    
    
}

finally, here's the button command for the only button in the tab above

/////ui button command
/*
    needs no arguments
*/
global proc getWeights()
{
    print("getting weights");
}

I would also recommend taking a look at Walter Behrne's (polyextrude dot com) his online tutorials were fantastic, and I learned about tabs from reading them.


Thanks,
Nathaniel