Blue-Mel Studio is a Maya plug-in written for MEL script developers. If you know the power of this scripting language and you spent a lot of time using Maya ScriptEditor, you probably be aware of the many limitations of Maya ScriptEditor, i.e. the leak of Find/Replace function, the multilevel undo and more. Blue-Mel Studio has been written to replace the default Maya ScriptEditor. It offers a new developing environment for Maya Embedded Language with advanced and useful features. Blue-Mel Studio is highly integrated with Maya user interface to increase the productivity and it is available for Maya 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0 This plug-in is still under developement and upgrade. Now the 0.9.6.4 beta release is available. This upgrade represents a completely redesigned release. The user interface and the internal architecture were totally revritten to support new features and easily allow future improvements. If you never used Blue-Mel Studio, try it! It doesn't matter if you are a guru or a novice in MEL writing: once you used it you'll never go back again.

Features

Main features implemented in Blue-Mel Studio 0.9.6.4 beta:

• Highly integrated into Maya user interface
• Multiple Document Intrface (MDI)
• Find/Replace functions
• Unlimited Undo/Redo
• Colored comments, keywords, MEL commands, strings and uncompleted strings, to allow better code understanding
• Current line highlighting
• Llines number visualization (to the source code side)
• Current line number visualization (in the Status Line)
• Splitable views
• Jump to line number function
• Jump to correspondent Bracket function
• Drag&Drop source code to/from the shelf
• Execution of entire code and of selected parts
• Advance Auto Indent, to simplify complex code writing.
• QuickHelp - quick-link to the MEL commands documentation (to access to this feature, just click with the left mouse button on a command typed into the Blue-Mel Studio window and then press F1)
• Complete Command - MEL commands autocomplete (to access to this feature, type few letters of a MEL command and then press Ctrl+Space. A listbox pops up to the side, showing a selection of possible commands. If no listbox appears the thing you typed is not part of a knew MEL command)
• Complete Attribute - aided-complete for dependency node attributes.
• Mark/Unmark line function (Ctrl+F2)
• Jump to next/previous marked line functions (F2 / Shift+F2)
• Customizable colors and fonts to increase view comfort.

Features that will be introduced in version 1.0:

• Schematic visualization of the declared procedures
• Full documentation.

Download

Install

To install Blue-Mel Studio 0.9.6.4 Beta follow these quick steps:

1. Find on your workstation the directory containing the Maya installation (usually C:\AW\Maya?.? or C:\Program Files\AliasWavefront\Maya?.?).
2. Estract the blueMelStudio.zip in the Maya "bin\plug-ins\" folder. If this folder is write protected, find an alternative location where you can put the Blue-Mel Studio extracted files.
3. Run Maya and open the Plug-in Manager (Window->Settings/Preferences->Plug-in Manager).
4. Find "blueMelStudio.mll" on the plug-ins list. If it doesn't appear, click the "Browse" button and look for the "blueMelStudio.mll" file into the folder where you previously extracted the files. A new line containing information about "blueMelStudio.mll" should appear. Enable the "loaded" and "auto load" checkboxes beside.
5. To pop up Blue-Mel Studio select the menu Window->General Editors->Blue Mel Studio. If you can't see this menu, colse Maya and then run it again: this is due to a still unsolved problem in the menu refresh.

To uninstall Blue-Mel Studio 0.9.6.4 Beta follow these few steps:

1. Run Maya and open the Plug-in Manager (Window->Settings/Preferences->Plug-in Manager).
2. If Blue-Mel Studio window is open, close it before continuing.
3. Find "blueMelStudio.mll" on the plug-in list and disable the "loaded" and "auto load" checkboxes beside.
4. Delete the"blueMelStudio.mll" and "blueMelStudio.dat" files from the folder where you previously installed Blue-Mel Studio.

Blue-Mel Studio does not add any proprietary dependency node to Maya project and scene files, so it's not necessary to install it on all workstations in order to share projects between several users.