Creating new modifiers (noise)

Many 3D modeling and animation packages provide a way to add a bit of random noise to the vertices of an object, but Maya does not. This may seem like an oversight, but it also provides us with a great example project.

In this example, we'll write a script to step through all of the vertices of a polygonal object and move each of them slightly. Here's an example of what a simple polygonal sphere looks like both before and after applying the script that we'll be developing:

How to do it...

Create a new script, name it addNoise.py, and add the following code:

import maya.cmds as cmds
import random

def addNoise(amt):

    selectedObjs = cmds.ls(selection=True)
    obj = selectedObjs[-1]

    shapeNode = cmds.listRelatives(obj, shapes=True)

    if (cmds.nodeType(shapeNode) != 'mesh'):
        cmds.error('Select a mesh')
        return

    numVerts = cmds.polyEvaluate(obj, vertex=True)

    randAmt = [0, 0, 0]
    for i in range(0, numVerts):

        for j in range...