NXT Maya: Add option to provide paths to NXT layers to open in nxt_ui command

[michaelharmonart]

We have a place in our pipeline where it would be nice to have tooling to open NXT layers associated with rigging certain assets, and where manually navigating to a file is redundant as the pipeline can provide it assuming it can pass that data to NXT.

This is the cleanest way I could think of to interface such that we keep the nice behavior of having graceful file save popups on quit, etc.

[ImLucasBrown]

Thanks for the PR! I don't have Maya to test this, but I spotted a few issues I think need to be addressed. Also could you please target the dev branch instead of release. 🙂

[ImLucasBrown]

The parser does not declare positional args so auto_reload will raise a RuntimeError since it calls cmds.nxt_ui('reload').
I don't have Maya to confirm this, but I think this also breaks the "Open Editor" menu item since I think those callbacks pass a bool arg.

[michaelharmonart]

for the auto_reload function.... it doesn't seem to be used anywhere? and also the reload flag was never parsed or passed through by anything. should it just be removed?

[michaelharmonart]

I think this also breaks the "Open Editor" menu item since I think those callbacks pass a bool arg.

Huh, would you look at that it does. You learn something new everyday.

[michaelharmonart]

Ahh shoot, can't believe I missed adding the flag for reload.

Thank you for your notes!

I'll rebase on dev and address those.

[enriquevelmai]

Nice, we had the same need and moved to MSyntax flags locally as well. Two things from our version that might be worth folding in here, since they touch the same code:

1. Focus instead of duplicating. When nxt_ui is called with no -path and an editor is already open, raise / activate it instead of building a second window:

if __NXT_INSTANCE__ is not None and not paths:
    try:
        if __NXT_INSTANCE__.isMinimized():
            __NXT_INSTANCE__.showNormal()
        elif __NXT_INSTANCE__.isHidden():
            __NXT_INSTANCE__.show()
        __NXT_INSTANCE__.raise_()
        __NXT_INSTANCE__.activateWindow()
        return
    except RuntimeError:
        # The previous window was deleted C++ side; rebuild a new one
        __NXT_INSTANCE__ = None

2. -reload is currently a pass. What we use (mirrors auto_reload):

if parser.isFlagSet(NxtUiCmd.kReloadFlag):
    safe = True
    if __NXT_INSTANCE__:
        safe = __NXT_INSTANCE__.close()
    if not safe:
        cmds.warning('Aborted reload!')
        return
    __NXT_INSTANCE__ = None

With that, auto_reload can just call cmds.nxt_ui(reload=True). Happy to open a follow-up PR on top of this one once it lands if you prefer that.

[wyoder]

We are taking a look @michaelharmonart and @enriquevelmai. We will get back to you on this soon.

removing this for now. If you want to chat, let me know