Rounding floats to integers

Since there isn't a specific MEL command for rounding floating point numbers to the nearest integer, we have to be a bit clever. Thanks to Julia Pakalns for a particularly elegant solution..

float $float = 3.14159265;

floor ( $float + 0.5 );

// Result: 3

And in Python? Just use the round() function:

float = 3.14159265

round ( float , 3)

# Result: 3.142 #

round ( float )

# Result: 3.0 #

round() is a built-in Python function, so no need to import anything from the math module.

OK, so now what about rounding a float to a given number of decimal places, in MEL ?

Bern asks

"[...] can you please ask for a 'rounding' function instead of having to write something such as:

proc float round(float $val,float $dec){

    $sign = `sign $val`;

    float $dec = `pow 10 $dec`;

    $val = (int) (($val + $sign*5/($dec*10)) * $dec);

    $val = ($val / $dec);

    return $val;

}

...each time i want to round a number"

Well, Bern, one answer would be to use the python round() command, except you invoke it from MEL:

python ("round (100.555, 1)")
// Result: 100.6 //

Although this gets messy when you want to parse a MEL variable.

So my only other suggestion is to incorporate Julia's idea:

global proc float round(float $val,float $dec){

float $dp = `pow 10 $dec`;

$val = $val*$dp;

$val = `floor ($val + 0.5)`;

return ($val/$dp);

}

Save this procedure to a script called round.mel, put this in your user scripts directory and it'll be sourced automatically the next time you launch Maya.

Owen

Comments

[Stefan Andersson]

instead of round(float) you can also typ int(float), but I guess float is better to use to have consistance.

regards
stefan