Getting object attributes in Maya with Python

Modifying an object inside Maya usually involves modifying its attributes.

These attributes are represented in code by the object name followed by the attribute name:

polyCube1.input

Where .input would be the attribute name, for example .translate, .rotate etc

Let’s see an example:

# Import the Maya commands library
from maya import cmds

# Create a cube
cube = cmds.polyCube()

# Store the cube name
cubeShape = cube[0]

# Store the size of the object on the X axis using the scale attribute
xSize = cmds.getAttr(cubeShape+'.scaleX')

print xSize

Output: 1.0

Shorthand Attributes

Attributes in Maya have shorthand versions, to name a few:

translateX	tx
translateY	ty
translateZ	tz
scaleX	sx
scaleY	sy
scaleZ	sz
rotateX	rx
rotateY	ry
rotateZ	rz

We’ll modify our previous code to use the shorthand:

# Import the Maya commands library
from maya import cmds

# Create a cube
cube = cmds.polyCube()

# Store the cube name
cubeShape = cube[0]

# Store the size of the object on the X axis using the scale attribute (shorthand)
xSize = cmds.getAttr(cubeShape+'.sx')

print xSize