Maya Data Visualization

A Docker container for running Autodesk Maya through its interactive Python scripting API with Nimble.

Install Docker

You must have Docker installed and running before you can use this container. You can find the installers for your system at the Docker Community Editition site.

Get Container

Once Docker is installed and running, you can install the Maya Data Vis container by executing the command:

$ docker pull swernst/maya-data-vis

Start Container

To start the container use the docker run command with the following arguments:

$ docker run \
    -di \
    --rm \
    -p 7800:7800 \
    -p 7801:7801 \
    -p 8000:8000 \
    swernst/maya-data-vis

When the container is started, it will start Maya in command line mode with an active Python interpreter that is running a Nimble server.

It will also start a static-file web server on port 8000 where you can view your rendered files.

Hello Maya Data Vis

from nimble import cmds
from nimble import actions

# Create a polygon cube in the center of the screen
cmds.polyCube()

# Render the scene to the /output/test.png folder in the container
actions.render(directory='/output', name='test')

Once the render is complete, the file test.png will be saved to the container's output folder. You can view the file in your browser by opening the file with the url:

http://localhost:8000/test.png

Shared Libraries

If you want to share Python libraries between the host and container so that you can edit those libraries on the host and view the changes in the container you will need to mount a volume to the container with an additional argument in the run command specified above:

$ docker run \
    -di \
    --rm \
    -p 7800:7800 \
    -p 7801:7801 \
    -p 8000:8000 \
    -v /path/to/my/libraries:/libraries
    swernst/maya-data-vis

The /libraries directory in the container is part of the Python path for the container. Therefore, any Python libraries you mount within this directory will be available inside Maya. Just replace /path/to/my/libraries with the actual path to a directory that contains your Python libraries in the command above and your container will have access to those libraries and any changes you make to them.

Stop Container

The container will continue to run with Maya active until you manually shut it down. The run command included the --rm flag, so once you shut the container down it will be deleted automatically.