saving out component selections to xml or json

[mamasio]

Hi,
I'm trying to figure out how to save a component selection out to xml or json.

I'd like to be able to select any character / creature polygon mesh and designate a selection of points / edges / polygons as "elbow" or "knee" in an xml / json so I can have a stack of python snippets that run, and I can path them to that particular mesh's set of files to move a rig or rig builder into position, post sculpting.

Hmmm, that sounded vague... I use several meshes over and over. I already have a set of scripts I've created that automatically rig to the mesh based on the boundingbox centres of little selection lists (i.e. the elbow joint always snaps to humanMesh.pnt[25-30,48], etc) except I'd like to be able to alter the vertex ID of my mesh by deleting or adding geometry. I'd rather not tediously copy and paste compenent selections directly into my python scripts. If I could just save out my current selection as a json or an xml then I could easily update those and keep the core rig building scripts ulaltered.

I'm fairly busy at work, and no one uses XSI there, I'm really more on the modeling end anyway. Point is I don't get to dedicate a lot of time to researching this (writing to file is new to me) and I've already blown plenty of hours trying to figure this out... any help would be appreciated.

thanks si-community

[csaez]

I don't have access to softimage from this computer, but python json module is about as straightforward as it gets.