The Maya Interface is somewhat familiar to me, but I don't know everything about it. To be able to write successful scripts in Mel, a basic understanding of Maya and how it generally works is necessary.
http://www.expertrating.com/courseware/MAYACourse/Maya-Interface-1.asp
This website has a great rundown of the Maya Interface, which I will briefly discuss here. It is Maya 6.5 but the same principles seem to apply to the 2011 version. The above website has a lot of tutorials about subjects concerning Maya that I never knew about before. This is exciting.
The first bar located near the top of Maya is the Menu Bar. The second bar underneath it is the Status Line to display the framework in which one is working To switch between the frameworks on the Status Line, which effects the additional dropdown menus on the menu bar and Status Line, use Hot Keys.
Hot Keys(2011):
F1: Load Maya Help.
F2: Animation Framework
F3: Polygons Framework
F4: Surfaces Framework
F5: Dynamics Framework
F6: Rendering Framework
F8: Toggle between Select by object or component type
F9: Select by component type-points
F10: Selects point, line, and face components
F11: Selects by component type-faces
F12:Selects points, parm points, and face components
All the menu dropdowns can be changed into separate windows within the Maya interface if one clicks on the dashed line at the start of each menu. The UI elements can be shown or disappear off-screen by checking or unchecking the box under the Display and UI elements menus. The collapser divider tabs help items on the Status Line show up and disappear as well.
The purpose of the Status Line is to control the type of selections made with Maya. There are three types of selections in the Status Line: Hierarchy, Objects, and Components. Depending on the option, actions accompany them to the right and help the user make a specific choice about what they want to see and do with models they've created. Hierarchy selection refers to highlighting a parent or child object. The Lock Selection prevents any other selection. To the right is the Highlight Selection button, which if it is turned on, will highlight an object in the workspace light blue, or if turned off will keep the object gray.
Snap to buttons are great to prevent unnecessary movement of an object or component. To control the way objects are put together, select the Input to and Output from object buttons. The Construction History button keeps track of changes to the object. Render buttons are also available which will make my job a lot easier.
These include Render View, Current Frame Render, IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Render) and Display Render Settings Window. The Numeric Input tool in Maya 2011 has four functions(Absolute Transform, Relative Transform, Rename, Select by Name). I have worked with the first two, but never realized the convenience of the second two operations.
This tutorial is lengthy so I will continue the learning process on my own.
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/maya_2011_highlight_qt_user_interface
This tutorial or demo discussed how to create fuctions using Qt (see below) to make the UI specific to how you want it to work. I learned from this video that windows can be docked and undocked and moved around within Maya. So windows can be placed wherever the user pleases.
Qt is a program that can help Maya users create useful features in the UI (User Interface) for Maya 2011.
http://qt.nokia.com/products/
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