Useful "outside" tools

katmouse
Makes every scrollable area active by simply mousing over it - no need for focus.

Just in case no one has run across theseā€¦

Cygwin - because dos blows
(Unix port for windows, bash, cshell,tcshell etcā€¦)

If you install Xming/Cygwin you can run x-apps in windows.

Filter Forge - plugin generator for photoshop.

ImageJ - Javascript based image processorā€¦tons of libraries and addons.
Lots of mathy samples.

One that I had installed on all the artistā€™s machines is Clickie

Clickie adds 2 context menu items to Windows Explorer - Copy Path Name and Open MS-DOS Prompt.

The Copy Path Name does what it says, copies the path of the selected file to the clipboard so you can paste it into any import prompt.

I also recommend ConTEXT for MEL Scripting.

Thanks for sharing so many tools. I canā€™t wait to get back to the office and try out some of these new tools!

Cheers!
WSHill

As for copying a path of a selected item to the clipboard, this feature is supported by windows natively, just hold down Shift and right-click on any icon, youā€™ll get an extended context menu with this option in it.

Useful, but copies the path as a string, which makes you often deleting the quotation marks.

Well since I havenā€™t seen it posted yet so I will throw it out. jEdit . Pretty sweet, open source text editor. I prefer it over context for python scripting, and it has just about every language you can think of.

Direct Folders is a godsend!

Iā€™ve been using VisualWX for python UI design. Design it here, then into Wing for actual work.

Oh and SQLyog for db work

Stumbled on these two programs that allow you to poke around inside of .dll files. Found em handy for seeing into the inner workings. The second one will even display code. :nod:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/AutoDiagrammer.aspx
http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/

The ComLoader plug for that reflector might be interesting also: ā€œLists COM components for browsing and converts them into managed interop assemblies.ā€

Iā€™ve recently moved to eclipse with pydev for script development, but until someone writes a plugin for showing MEL procs in the eclipse outliner - I still edit MEL in jEdit with this awesome little code browser:
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/tools/syntax_scripting/4012.html

In addition to listing what could be dozens of global and local procs in a file, it also organizes all of your variables by type and skips to the point in your code where they are declared when selected in the browser.

BTW, if anyone could point me to an outliner for MEL for eclipse - that would be great! (I know, Iā€™ve moved on to python too - but that doesnā€™t mean I no longer have to support last years code.)

Wow some very good stuff on here. Hereā€™s my favorites that arenā€™t listed here yet:

QTTabBar - Combine all your explorer windows into one window with tabs! For those who switch folders a lot and end up with too many explorer windows by the end of the day. (Has a ton of options too - may require some tweaking of them to get windows to always use tabs)

QTAddressBar - Gives Windows XPā€™s explorer the vista-style breadcrumbs folder navigating.

To get these explorer addons to ā€œstay onā€ you can set up an explorer view then do Tools->Folder Options, under the View tab press ā€œApply to All Foldersā€.

notepad ++
google it, great for xml editing
direct folders is awesome too.

Anyone know of a method, tool, or script for creating a series of folders from a text file? I want to create folders named from a list of names in a text file (or spreadsheet).

Donā€™t know of any existing tool or script but you could write it in couple lines of codeā€¦ You can do it from your 3d app or if you want it standalone, look at python.

anton,

I should have mentioned that I am way more Artist than Tech and havenā€™t learned any scripting yet (part of why I asked).

Found this, http://www.newfolderwizard.com/, but as Christian Szell might ask, ā€œIs it safe?ā€

Here is a couple of tools to help you along with your regular expressions:

http://www.regexmagic.com/ & RegexBuddy

Both are pretty dam sweet!

~B)

In a DOS command window type:

for /f %i in (filename.txt) do mkdir %i

It will make a directory for each line of the file. It will also make subdirectories (for example if one of the lines is foo exture\body, it will make the full hierarchy).

DOS is actually pretty damn powerful for these kinds of things. For more info, type ā€œhelp forā€ or ā€œhelp ifā€ in the DOS command prompt.

My personal favourite for all sorts of folder-creating, file-reading automating quick and dirty tools is (probably mentioned early in this thread) AutoIt.

It has solved me quite a bunch of problems, itā€™s easy to use, andā€¦ well, itā€™s fast.

edit: fast as in, fast to get it up and running. Itā€™s kinda slow on performance actually :stuck_out_tongue:

@torgo3000,

Thanks! Just what I was looking for.

DJV Imaging
A really useful tool for video/image sequence viewing/converting.

http://www.sublimetext.com/

Texteditor of the future