Maya Python exporting selected objects as separate files and generating a Maya thumbnail for use with the content browser

Question

Thank you for any help/guidance that you can provide, I'm really hoping someone can help me with this problem. The script is supposed to go through a selection of objects and export each one into a separate file in the prompted location, it should isolate each object, frame it and generate a maya thumbnail for use with the content browser. Below is the code:

import maya.cmds as cmds
import os

# Get a list of selected objects
selected_objects = cmds.ls(selection=True)

if len(selected_objects) == 0:
    cmds.warning("Please select and object to export")

else:
    # Prompt the user for the location to export the files
    export_location = cmds.fileDialog2(fm=3, dir=os.path.expanduser('~'))[0]
    
    # Iterate over the selected objects
    for object in selected_objects:

        # Select object
        cmds.select(object)
        
        # Isolate the current object
        cmds.isolateSelect('modelPanel1', loadSelected=True)
        
        # Take a thumbnail of the current object
        cmds.viewFit(object)
        
        # Create thumbnail capture
        cmds.thumbnailCaptureComponent(capture=True, save=export_location + "/" + object + ".ma")
           
        # Use the file command to export the object
        cmds.file( export_location + "/" + object + ".ma", type='mayaAscii', exportSelected=True, force=True )
        
        # Reset the isolation
        cmds.isolateSelect('modelPanel1', state=False)

It does most of what I require it to do other than isolating the object correctly and exporting a thumbnail for each object. I would prefer if the cmds.thumbnailCaptureComponent didn't prompt and just generated the thumbnail automatically, but if it has to prompt that's fine too. Currently it only seems to generate a thumbnail for the last selected object rather than the object it is currently on in the for loop.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 21 '23 at 22:19

To fix the issue with generating a thumbnail for each object, you can try changing the following line:

cmds.thumbnailCaptureComponent(capture=True, save=export_location + "/" + object + ".ma")

to:

cmds.thumbnailCapture(capture=True, save=export_location + "/" + object + ".jpg")

Maya Python exporting selected objects as separate files and generating a Maya thumbnail for use with the content browser

1 Answers1