tentacletk 0.7.3

A Python3/PySide2 marking menu style toolkit for Maya, 3ds Max, and Blender.

Tentacle: A Python3/PySide2 Marking Menu and UI Toolkit

Tentacle is a Python3/PySide2 marking menu and UI toolkit designed for Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, and any other DCC app that supports the PySide2 framework. It is a personal project and is currently a work in progress.

Design

Tentacle is a dynamic UI toolkit with a marking menu style UI derived from a QStackedWidget. The switchboard module, derived from QUiLoader, provides properties and convenience methods that allow quick and easy getting/setting of relevant UI and widget data across modules.

Example

The following example demonstrates re-opening the last scene, renaming a material, and selecting geometry by that material.

Structure

The structure of the project is as follows:

Module	Description
tcl	Handles main GUI construction for the marking menu.
overlay	Tracks cursor position and UI hierarchy to generate paint events that overlay its parent widget.
ui	Location of the dynamic UI files.
slots	Location of the various slot modules.

Installation

Add the tentacle folder to a directory on your Python path, or install via pip in a command line window using:

python -m pip install tentacletk

Usage

To launch the marking menu:

For Maya, add a macro to a hotkey similar to the following:

from uitk import tcl_maya
tcl_maya.show(key_show='Key_F12')

For 3ds Max, add a macro to a hotkey similar to the following:

macroScript main_max
category: "_macros.ui"
silentErrors: false
autoUndoEnabled: false
(
	python.Execute "from uitk import tcl_max"
	python.Execute "tcl_max.show(key_show='Key_F12')"
)

Again, please note that this is a personal project and is currently a work in progress. Contributions are welcome.