What is non-relative version of Transform.translateBy?

Coding
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#1

I’m working with pymel and am trying to spread selected object inside the range of 10 units.

def spread():
    selList = pm.ls(sl=True)
    for obj in selList:
        rangeX = random.randint(-10, 10)
        rangeZ = random.randint(-10, 10)
        obj.translateBy((rangeX, 0, rangeZ))

This works but it’s relative to current translate of the object. Suppose if I run this function 5 times, each time it would calculate the 10 unit translate from the current position it is moved.

Previously, I was working with maya.cmds and used setAttr for translation of the object, and it worked fine.

setAttr(obj + ".translateX", rangeX)

But now I want to use pymel; for sake of it’s pythonic-ness.

#2

You can among other things do

obj.setAttr('translateX', rangeX)
pm.setAttr(obj.translateX, rangeX)

Then you have the xform command and all kinds of ways to position items.

1 Like
#3

You can also use this method, using a pm.datatypes.Vector or a list or tuple:

obj.setTranslation([rangeX, 0, rangeZ], space='world')

And when you use this to get positions,

obj.getTranslation(space='world') # or whatever space you want

then you can use all the pm.datatypes.Vector methods on the result.

1 Like
#4

+1 for .setTranslation use it in my pymel code.