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Execute GameFbxExporter Maya with Python

I need to export thousand of files with the GameFbXExporter Plugin from Maya, and I was wondering if there was any way to script those exports, knowing that the parameters are fine in every files. All I need to do is fill the path section and the name of the exported file in FBX, then launching the export itself with the plugin.
I'm kind of lost and doesn't know how to do this. Could someone help me understand how to reach that please?
Thank you

The game exporter is written in MEL, so you can interact with it from Python using the maya.mel module. This will open the dialog, for example:
import maya.mel as mel
mel.eval("gameFbxExporter();")
Unfortunately a quick look at the actual game exporter scripts (which are in your maya install directory in the scripts/others directory -- they all start with the prefix "gameFBX") make it look like the UI is hopelessly entangled with the actual act of exporting; it doesn't seem to expose anything which actually just exports the current file in a batch friendly way.
The operative procedure is called gameExp_FBXExport, defined in "gameFbxExporter.mel." It appears like the actual business of exporting is actually delegated to the regular FBX plugin -- all the other stuff in the game exporter is just managing fbx presets, selecting parts of the scene to export (if you have the scenes set that way) and then calling the fbx plugin. So, you may be able to batch the process using Python by looping over your files and calling FBXExport() from Python. This will export file to FBX:
import maya.cmds as cmds
cmds.FBXExport('-file', 'path/to/file.fbx')
It will just use whatever FBX settings are currently active, so you will need to be confident that the files are correctly set up. You'll be tempted to write it as cmds.FBXExport(f='path/to/file') but that won't work -- the FBX plugin commands don't use regular python syntax.
If your current settings rely on the export-selected functionality you'll need to figure out how to cache the correct selections -- if you're using the "export selections set" functionality you should be able to have your exporter find the set by name and the select it before exporting.
cmds.select("name_of_selection_set")
cmds.FBXExport('-file', 'path/to/file.fbx')
You can use the other FBX plugin commands -- documented here to inspect and manipulate the settings in your files as you go along.
Most professional users don't use the GameExport pipeline precisely because it's very opaque and not batch friendly. In the long run you'll probably want to write a simple system that provides standard settings for different file types and exports the FBXes directly without the GameExporter - while it's a not-trivial project it's going to be easier to maintain and expand than hacking your way around the edges of Autodesk's version which is, frankly, pretty lame.
If you're not already familiar with it http://tech-artists.org/ is a great place to look for pipeline help and advice.

saving a python figure that later can be viewed interactively

I am using Spyder to edit python code. I plotted a figure like following on my screen:
As you can see I have zoom-in on my menu by playing which I can magnify a ROI like following:
Now I need to send this figure to another person who'd like to view this figure interactively, say do zoom-in/zoom-out as well.So my question is, is there anyway to send this figure in certain format the other person can play with such that me without sending my entire python code?
I tried to the save icon on the menu bar, but I did not see a format that can do what I want. I am new to python, please advice. Thank you.
PS: I think in MATLAB you can do that by saving the figure in certain format, so that as long as the other person has MATLAB installed, he/she does not need the data to see the figure interactively

You need to use the pickle module.
MATLAB saves the figure in a .fig format. This is really just a .mat MATLAB data file with a different extension so MATLAB knows it stores image data. If you change the extension to .mat, you can open it is a refular MATLAB data file and see that it just contains variables storing image information.
The equivalent thing to do in matplotlib is to use the pickle.dump function to save the matplotlib figure object to a file. Someone else can then just load the figure from the file and show it. Although the other person may need to have the same matplotlib version installed.
A better option would be to use something like bokeh to save an interactive HTML plot.

I believe its too late for an answer whereas I think it will help others.
In python, if an interactive figure is plotted in plotly. Then it can be exported as a .html.
For reference please follow official documentation Interactive HTML Export in Python
.
I hope it helps.

Alternate between Executing a MATLAB file and a Python script

I have a MATLAB file that currently saves its variables into a .mat workspace. The python script uses SciPy.io to read these variables from the workspace. The python script performs some operations & resaves variables into a MATLAB workspace(agin using Scipy.io) which matlab should then reopen. I'm using MATLABR2013a and I dont think there's an easy way to run the python script from within the .m file itself.
There may be an easier way then the method I'm going about doing it but my current plan is to create a bash script that runs the matlab file and only proceeds to the latter section if a random variable (stored in another file) is of a certain value. The script then calls the python script, sets the random variable to a different (can view as a sort of boolean). The matlab script will then execute the second section but not the first section. I need to have about 5 or 6 such exclusive sections however and it's easier to have them all in the same .m file than it is to separate them
This seems tedious however when all I really want is a way to have the system pause the matlab script, run the python script and come back to that spot in the matlab script.
Appreciate all creative suggestions to make this workflow as efficient as possible and easy to modify

MATLAB code detailed below
I saved the workspace using MATLAB's save function
Used MATLAB's system() function to execute the python script.
Within python, used scipy.iosavemat to save variables I wanted to access in matlab
Used MATLAB's load function to load the variables from python back into matlab's workspace
writeto=['insert path to save to here']
save(writeto)
first_Pypath=['insert path of python script here']
py_call=horzcat('python ',first_Pypath);
system(py_call);

Excel Python API

Does anyone know of a way of accessing MS Excel from Python? Specifically I am looking to create new sheets and fill them with data, including formulae.
Preferably I would like to do this on Linux if possible, but can do it from in a VM if there is no other way.

xlwt and xlrd can read and write Excel files, without using Excel itself:
http://www.python-excel.org/

Long time after the original question, but last answer pushed it top of feed again. Others might benefit from my experience using python and excel.
I am using excel and python quite bit. Instead of using the xlrd, xlwt modules directly, I normally use pandas. I think pandas uses these modules as imports, but i find it much easier using the pandas provided framework to create and read the spreadsheets. Pandas's Dataframe structure is very "spreadsheet-like" and makes life a lot easier in my opinion.
The other option that I use (not in direct answer to your problem) is DataNitro. It allows you to use python directly within excel. Different use case, but you would use it where you would normally have to write VBA code in Excel.

there is Python library to read/write Excel 2007 xlsx/xlsm files http://pythonhosted.org/openpyxl/

I wrote python class that allows working with Excel via COM interface in Windows http://sourceforge.net/projects/excelcomforpython/
The class uses win32com to interact with Excel. You can use class directly or use it as example. A lot of options implemented like array formulas, conditional formatting, charts etc.

It's surely possible through the Excel object model via COM: just use win32com modules for Python. Can't remember more but I once controlled the Media Player through COM from Python. It was piece of cake.

Its actually very simple. You can actually run anything from any program. Just see a way to reach command prompt from that program. In case of Excel, create a user defined function by pressing Alt+F11 and paste the following code.
Function call_cmd()
Shell "CMD /C Notepad", vbNormalFocus
End Function
Now press ctrl+s and go back to Excel, select a cell and run the function =call_cmd(). Here I ran Notepad. In the same way, you can see where python.exe is installed and run it. If you want to pass any inputs to python, then save the cells as file in local directory as csv file and read them in python using os.system().

How do I make powerpoint play presentations/load up ppts automatically?

I was wondering how I can make a script load powerpoint file, advance slides automatically and put it on full screen. Is there a way to make windows do that? Can I just load powerpoint.exe and maybe use some sort of API/Pipe to give commands from another script.
To make a case: I'm making a script that automatically scans a folder in windows (using python) and loads up the powerpoint presentations and keeps playing them in order.

One solution for you would be to use the PowerPoint Viewer program instead. PPT Viewer is set to open a PowerPoint file straight away in Presentation mode.
Alternatively, you can use the argument /s to start Powerpoint.
"powerpoint.exe /s <filename>.ppt"
This will be equivalent to telling PowerPoint to straight away open up in Presentation mode.

As previously stated, this is more StackOverflow geared, but this can easily be achieved with Python and AutoHotkey.
On the Python side of things, as a general idea on how to go about this (I'm kind of rusty, beware!):
Find files using os.walk()
Append each to a list, then iterate over the list, opening each one with os.system("powerpoint.exe /s filename"). The next one should not open until the previous closes.
AutoHotkey wise:
Once opened, use #IfWinActive to detect an open Powerpoint window, and send mouse clicks to change slides at a set interval
I don't know what you mean by "order", you'll have to determine that in your Python script. If you want them alphabetical, sort the list alphabetically then iterate. If you want them sorted by creation date, then sort by date and iterate and so on.

Save the file with the extension ".pps". That will make powerpoint open the file in presentation mode.
The presentaion needs to designed to advance slides, else you will have to script that part.

If you want more control over the powerpoint slide, you could write something in VB.Net (or other .Net languages) according to this MS support article.
If you wanted direct control from Python, you could probably use pywin32 or comtypes to invoke directly the same interfaces as described in the MS article. My guess is this is the most powerful solution and would probably provide the smoothest transitions between presentations, but is probably a lot more work than using subprocess to call into PowerPoint.