Practical Maya Programming with Python is Published

My book, Practical Maya Programming with Python has been finally published! Please check it out and tell me what you think. I hope you will find it sufficiently-but-not-overly opinionated :) It is about as personal as a technical book can get, being distilled from years of mentoring many technical artists and programmers, which is a very intimate experience. It also grows from my belief and observation that becoming a better programmer will, due to all sorts of indirect benefits, help make you a better person.

If you are using Python as a scripting language in a larger application- a game engine, productivity software, 3D software, even a monolithic codebase that no longer feels like Python- there’s a lot of relevant material here about turning those environments into more standard and traditional Python development environments, which give you better tools and velocity. The Maya knowledge required is minimal for much of the book. Wrapping a procedural undo system with context managers or decorators is universal. A short quote from the Preface:

This book is not a reference. It is not a cookbook, and it is not a comprehensive guide to Maya’s Python API. It is a book that will teach you how to write better Python code for use inside of Maya. It will unearth interesting ways of using Maya and Python to create amazing things that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. While there is plenty of code in this book that I encourage you to copy and adapt, this book is not about providing recipes. It is a book to teach skills and enable.

Finally, to those who pre-ordered, I’m truly sorry for all the delays. They’re unacceptable. I hope you’ll buy and enjoy the book anyway. At least I now have a real-world education on the perils of working with the wrong publisher, and won’t be making that same mistake again.

Thanks and happy reading!
Rob Galanakis