Tooling on Mat's Mind Dump

Switching from PyCharm to VS Code for Maya Development

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve been around here before, you might have seen my post on setting up PyCharm for Maya Python development. It’s been one of my more practical posts, and for a long time it reflected how I actually worked. PyCharm was my IDE of choice for Maya scripting, and I didn’t have much reason to look elsewhere.

I’d tried VS Code over the years and never really landed on it. Getting it properly configured for Maya — pointing it at the right interpreter, getting reasonable autocomplete — always felt like more friction than it was worth. PyCharm just worked, and once you had a good setup going, it was hard to argue with.

The Best PyCharm MayaPy Interpreter Setup

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

There’s no denying - Maya makes development hard.

Python is one of the most popular programming languages in the world as of 2022. The language supports many great workflows, but most are off-limits when working with Maya. Even just setting up an IDE with MayaPy has been a challenge through the years.

Today I will share how I set up PyCharm to work with MayaPy and how it enables a super-slick workflow for unit testing.

Python logging in Maya

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The logging module, while something I’ve been using for years, is not something I can say I’ve been clear on. I’ve dug in more recently and thought I would share some quick learnings.

Logger Hierarchy

The first item to note is that Python’s logging module behaves as an inheritance hierarchy. This hierarchy will automatically kick in by using dot notation in the naming of your logger. For example, “eh.bee.sea” inherits from “eh.bee”, which inherits from “eh”.