= undefined

Here's a quick tip on how to initialize a struct in maxscript, when an instance of the struct is created:

(
    -- This is just a sample of a struct that will be initialized 
    -- when an instance of it will be created.
    -- For this demo, we'll populate the someArray variable with 
    -- some random numbers.
    struct s_InitializableStruct (
        someArray = #(),     -- The default value is an empty array.
        
        -- The init function is the function that determines what will
        -- be initilized.
        fn init =
        (
            someArray = for i = 1 to 10 collect (random 0 1000)
        ),
        
        -- And this is the trick: use another variable, and assign to it
        -- the "result" of the init function.
        _init = init()
    )
    
    -- Create an instance of the struct
    local structInstance = s_InitializableStruct()
    -- Print the value of someArray
    format "%\n" structInstance.someArray
    -- As you can see, the someArray variable has been initialized with 10 random numbers
)

This tip describes how to create multiple masks with Renderman. This technique comes to expand the simple RGBA as masks technique. The problem with masks is usually anti-aliasing. If you use an object channel, it can only have a discreet value for each pixel, meaning that each pixel can hold only one object id value (as demonstrated in the image below,) and this means no anti-aliasing.

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In a recent job, I needed to create a dynamic user interface in Maya. I don't really like MEL, so I decided to go with Python. This was the first time I really used Python for anything.
One of the reasons I don't like MEL, is it kind of forces you to use global variables (using local ones becomes a pain if not impossible at some point.)
So, on I went and wrote something like this:

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