Creating a simple hierarchy structure in Maya using mel/python

Question

So I want to create a very simple structure out of group and locator nodes in Maya which will then be exported for use in my game level.

e.g.

Group_Root
  group_parent
    - group1
      - locator1
    - group2
      - locator2
    - group3

There is only one Group_Root in the file, there are many group_parents ( each uniquely named ) However all group_parent's have the same three sub-group names( "group1", "group2", "group3" ) and all group1 have a locator called locator1

What I have so far is:

group_parent = c.group( em=True, name="group_parent", parent="Group_Root")
modes =  ["group1", "group2", "group3"]
for mode in modes:
    mode_group = c.group( em=True, n=mode, parent=group_parent )
    if mode == "group1":
            s = c.spaceLocator(name="locator1")
            c.parent( mode_group ) 
    elif mode == "group3":
            s = c.spaceLocator(name="locator2")
            c.parent( mode_group )

However I get this error at "c.parent(mode_group)"

# Error: Object group1 is invalid

Presumably because there are more than one node called "group1" so it doesn't know which one to parent.

Any idea how I do this with full paths? e.g. "Group_Root|group_parent|group1"

Answer 1

Have you seen VFX Overflow? It's Q&A for visual effects, so I'd expect a number of the watchers to be quite familiar with Maya/MEL and Python. That said, it is fairly new so the user base is still small...