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Mimic Developer Guide

This document is meant to provide an overview of the Mimic codebase so that its easier for programmers to start modifying or contributing to it. While it isn't meant to replace more detailed documentation that can be found throughout the repository, think of it as a sort of quickstart guide to the repository itself and to how Mimic works under the hood.

If you're looking for developer notes and programming guidelines, check out mimic/docs/devnotes.md.

Design goals

Organization

|-- mimic
    |-- docs
    |-- icons
    |-- logos
    |-- plug-ins
    |-- rigs
    |-- scripts
    |-- shelves
    |-- ...

  • docs contains all of the general documentation that you might need in order to navigate or contribute to this repository. This directory also contains the files AUTHORS.md and LICENSE.md. Files preceded with an underscore, _, provide an index and sometimes basic descriptions of Mimic content.

  • icons contains logos, graphics, and button icons used throughout the Mimic documentation and user interface.

  • logos contains a ton of logos that users may feel free to use however they'd like.

  • plug-ins contains plug-in scripts that are used by Mimic and loaded by Maya at runtime. The name of this directory follows a Maya convention and shouldn't be modified.

  • rigs contains robot rigs, meaning the robot-geometry and attribute models that Mimic allows you to control on screen. Rigs are organized by robot brand.

  • scripts contains the actual Mimic codebase and any supplementary Python packages. The name of this directory follows a Maya convention and shouldn't be modified.

  • shelves contains an user interface button for Mimic that is loaded by Maya at runtime. The name of this directory follows a Maya convention and shouldn't be modified.

Things to notice right away

  • There are initialization files named __init__.py throughout the repository, allowing Mimic to be imported as one, big Python package. Notice that every directory that contains Python code also contains such a file. Notice also that these files are blank and need only be present to work.

  • Look out for markdown files with the extension .md throughout Mimic. These provide tons of documentation specific to nearby Python modules and files and will help to clarify any questions you have about how Mimic works.

  • Most directories contain a Python module of the same name, for example the directory mimic contains the module mimic.py. Nearby modules that provide supplementary functionality are prefixed accordingly, for example mimic_utils.py provides supplementary functionality for mimic.py.

  • The most important Python modules in the Mimic repository are prefixed by mimic and are located in the scripts directory. For documentation on these, see mimic.md; inline and functional comments are included throughout.