0.4.5

cmdx.Context

Improved support for reading plugs at arbitrary times.

Say you have a node with an animated translateX

tx = cmdx.create_node("animCurveTL")
tx.keys(times=[1, 2, 3, 4], values=[0, 10, 20, 33], interpolation=cmdx.Smooth)
node = cmdx.create_node("transform")
node["tx"] << tx["output"]

And you wanted to know the value at frame 3. You could either..

cmds.currentTime(3)
assert node["tx"].read() == 20
cmds.currentTime(1)  # Restore time

Which would alter the global timeline for everything in Maya, and provide you with the value for this one node.

Or you could..

assert node["tx"].read(time=3) == 20

Which is great for one-off reads, but once you get just a few of these, passing in an explicit time each time can get tedious, hard to read.

Since cmdx 0.4.5 and Maya 2018+ you can now leverage Maya's MDGContext.

context = om.MDGContext(om.MTime(3, unit=om.MTime.uiUnit()))
context.makeCurrent()
assert node["tx"].read() == 20
om.MDGContext.kNormal.makeCurrent()  # Restore "context"

On top of this, you can also leverage the new context manager, cmdx.DGContext with the optional cmdx.Context alias.

with cmdx.Context(3):
   assert node["tx"].read() == 20

Thanks to @monkeez for this addition!