pymel.core.modeling.alignSurface

alignSurface(*args, **kwargs)

The surface align command is used to align surfaces in maya. The main alignment options are positional, tangent and curvature continuity. Curvature continuity implies tangent continuity. NOTE: this tool is based on Studio’s align tool. Positional continuity means the surfaces (move) or the ends of the surfaces (modify) are changed. Tangent continuity means one of the surfaces is modified to be tangent at the points where they meet. Curvature continuity means one of the surfaces is modified to be curvature continuous as well as tangent. The default behaviour, when no surfaces or flags are passed, is to only do positional and tangent continuity on the active list with the end of the first surface and the start of the other surface used for alignment.

Flags:

Long Name / Short Name Argument Types Properties
attach / at bool ../../../_images/create.gif
  Should surfaces be attached after alignment?
caching / cch bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Toggle caching for all attributes so that no recomputation is needed
constructionHistory / ch bool ../../../_images/create.gif
  Turn the construction history on or off.
curvatureContinuity / cc bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Curvature continuity is on if true and off otherwise. Default:false
curvatureScale1 / cs1 float ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Curvature scale applied to curvature of first surface for curvature continuity. Default:0.0
curvatureScale2 / cs2 float ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Curvature scale applied to curvature of second surface for curvature continuity. Default:0.0
directionU / du bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  If true use U direction of surface and V direction otherwise. Default:true
frozen / fzn bool  
   
joinParameter / jnp float ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Parameter on reference surface where modified surface is to be aligned to. Default:123456.0
keepMultipleKnots / kmk bool ../../../_images/create.gif
  Should multiple knots be kept?
name / n unicode ../../../_images/create.gif
  Sets the name of the newly-created node. If it contains namespace path, the new node will be created under the specified namespace; if the namespace does not exist, it will be created.
nodeState / nds int ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Maya dependency nodes have 6 possible states. The Normal (0), HasNoEffect (1), and Blocking (2)states can be used to alter how the graph is evaluated. The Waiting-Normal (3), Waiting-HasNoEffect (4), Waiting-Blocking (5)are for internal use only. They temporarily shut off parts of the graph during interaction (e.g., manipulation). The understanding is that once the operation is done, the state will be reset appropriately, e.g. Waiting-Blockingwill reset back to Blocking. The Normaland Blockingcases apply to all nodes, while HasNoEffectis node specific; many nodes do not support this option. Plug-ins store state in the MPxNode::stateattribute. Anyone can set it or check this attribute. Additional details about each of these 3 states follow. StateDescriptionNormalThe normal node state. This is the default.HasNoEffectThe HasNoEffectoption (a.k.a. pass-through), is used in cases where there is an operation on an input producing an output of the same data type. Nearly all deformers support this state, as do a few other nodes. As stated earlier, it is not supported by all nodes. Its typical to implement support for the HasNoEffectstate in the nodes compute method and to perform appropriate operations. Plug-ins can also support HasNoEffect. The usual implementation of this state is to copy the input directly to the matching output without applying the algorithm in the node. For deformers, applying this state leaves the input geometry undeformed on the output. BlockingThis is implemented in the depend node base class and applies to all nodes. Blockingis applied during the evaluation phase to connections. An evaluation request to a blocked connection will return as failures, causing the destination plug to retain its current value. Dirty propagation is indirectly affected by this state since blocked connections are never cleaned. When a node is set to Blockingthe behavior is supposed to be the same as if all outgoing connections were broken. As long as nobody requests evaluation of the blocked node directly it wont evaluate after that. Note that a blocked node will still respond to getAttrrequests but a getAttron a downstream node will not reevaluate the blocked node. Setting the root transform of a hierarchy to Blockingwont automatically influence child transforms in the hierarchy. To do this, youd need to explicitly set all child nodes to the Blockingstate. For example, to set all child transforms to Blocking, you could use the following script. import maya.cmds as cmds def blockTree(root): nodesToBlock = [] for node in {child:1 for child in cmds.listRelatives( root, path=True, allDescendents=True )}.keys(): nodesToBlock += cmds.listConnections(node, source=True, destination=True ) for node in {source:1 for source in nodesToBlock}.keys(): cmds.setAttr( ‘%s.nodeState’ % node, 2 ) Applying this script would continue to draw objects but things would not be animated. Default:kdnNormal
object / o bool ../../../_images/create.gif
  Create the result, or just the dependency node.
positionalContinuity / pc bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Positional continuity is on if true and off otherwise. Default:true
positionalContinuityType / pct int ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Positional continuity type legal values: 1 - move first surface, 2 - move second surface, 3 - move both surfaces, 4 - modify first surface, 5 - modify second surface, 6 - modify both surfaces Default:1
replaceOriginal / rpo bool ../../../_images/create.gif
  Create in place(i.e., replace). Flag can have multiple arguments, passed either as a tuple or a list.
reverse1 / rv1 bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  If true, reverse the direction (specified by directionU) of the first input surface before doing align. Otherwise, do nothing to the first input surface before aligning. NOTE: setting this attribute to random values will cause unpredictable results and is not supported. Default:false
reverse2 / rv2 bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  If true, reverse the direction (specified by directionU) of the second input surface before doing align. Otherwise, do nothing to the second input surface before aligning. NOTE: setting this attribute to random values will cause unpredictable results and is not supported. Default:false
swap1 / sw1 bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  If true, swap the UV directions of the first input surface before doing align. Otherwise, do nothing to the first input surface before aligning. NOTE: setting this attribute to random values will cause unpredictable results and is not supported. Default:false
swap2 / sw2 bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  If true, swap the UV directions of the second input surface before doing align. Otherwise, do nothing to the second input surface before aligning. NOTE: setting this attribute to random values will cause unpredictable results and is not supported. Default:false
tangentContinuity / tc bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Tangent continuity is on if true and off otherwise. Default:true
tangentContinuityType / tct int ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Tangent continuity type legal values: 1 - do tangent continuity on first surface, 2 - do tangent continuity on second surface Default:1
tangentScale1 / ts1 float ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Tangent scale applied to tangent of first surface for tangent continuity. Default:1.0
tangentScale2 / ts2 float ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  Tangent scale applied to tangent of second surface for tangent continuity. Default:1.0
twist / tw bool ../../../_images/create.gif ../../../_images/query.gif ../../../_images/edit.gif
  If true, reverse the second surface in the opposite direction (specified by directionU) before doing align. This will avoid twists in the aligned surfaces. Otherwise, do nothing to the second input surface before aligning. NOTE: setting this attribute to random values will cause unpredictable results and is not supported. Default:false Common flags

Derived from mel command maya.cmds.alignSurface

Example:

import pymel.core as pm

# Do modify positional continuity on both active surfaces with no history:
pm.alignSurface( ch=False, pc=True, pct=6 )

# Do positional and tangent continuity, with the second surface
# tangent modified (by default move position continuity is done
# on the first surface):
pm.alignSurface( tc=True, tct=2 )