How can I create a new Graph Editor in Maya using Python?

Question

I want to add the part of the graph editor, that shows the curves and the names of the curves, to a menu I've made. Does anyone have any suggestions to how I could do this?

UPDATE

I'm trying to get something similar to the image above. Adding on a graph and outliner. I've managed to find the code for the outliner (cmds.outlinerPanel), but i'm not so sure about the graph :\

I'm using maya 2014.

Answer 1

Ok. Super quick example for creating a graph editor panel using Maya cmds:

import maya.cmds as cmds

cmds.window()
cmds.frameLayout()
cmds.animCurveEditor()
cmds.showWindow()

But, for future, if you want to add any Maya widget that isn't available as a Maya command, you could use PySide's power to do that. Here is an example. It is code that I slightly modified from Nathan Horne's awesome post on embedding Maya UI widgets on Qt UI and PySide/Shiboken:

import maya.cmds as cmds
import maya.OpenMayaUI as apiUI
from PySide import QtCore, QtGui
import shiboken

def wrapinstance(ptr, base=None):
    """
    Utility to convert a pointer to a Qt class instance (PySide/PyQt compatible)
    :param ptr: Pointer to QObject in memory
    :type ptr: long or Swig instance
    :param base: (Optional) Base class to wrap with (Defaults to QObject, which should handle anything)
    :type base: QtGui.QWidget
    :return: QWidget or subclass instance
    :rtype: QtGui.QWidget
    """
    if not globals().has_key('QtCore') or not globals().has_key('QtGui'):
        return None

    if ptr is None:
        return None
    ptr = long(ptr)  # Ensure type
    if globals().has_key('shiboken'):
        if base is None:
            qObj = shiboken.wrapInstance(long(ptr), QtCore.QObject)
            metaObj = qObj.metaObject()
            cls = metaObj.className()
            superCls = metaObj.superClass().className()
            if hasattr(QtGui, cls):
                base = getattr(QtGui, cls)
            elif hasattr(QtGui, superCls):
                base = getattr(QtGui, superCls)
            else:
                base = QtGui.QWidget
        return shiboken.wrapInstance(long(ptr), base)
    elif globals().has_key('sip'):
        base = QtCore.QObject
        return sip.wrapinstance(long(ptr), base)
    else:
        return None

def getMayaWindow():
    ptr = apiUI.MQtUtil.mainWindow()
    return wrapinstance(long(ptr), QtCore.QObject)

def toQtObject(mayaName):
    '''
    Given the name of a Maya UI element of any type,
    return the corresponding QWidget or QAction.
    If the object does not exist, returns None
    '''
    ptr = apiUI.MQtUtil.findControl(mayaName)
    if ptr is None:
        ptr = apiUI.MQtUtil.findLayout(mayaName)
    if ptr is None:
        ptr = apiUI.MQtUtil.findMenuItem(mayaName)
    if ptr is not None:
        return wrapinstance(long(ptr), QtCore.QObject)

class MayaSubWindow(QtGui.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self, parent=getMayaWindow()):
        super(MayaSubWindow, self).__init__(parent)
        qtObj = toQtObject(cmds.animCurveEditor())
        #Fill the window, could use qtObj.setParent
        #and then add it to a layout.
        self.setCentralWidget(qtObj)

myWindow = MayaSubWindow()
myWindow.show()

Even though this is a seemingly long piece of code, you can safely add wrapinstance(), getMayaWindow() and toQtObject() to your utilities module for reuse.

Hope that was useful.