Hey there! No worries at all about your wording—we’ve all been there as new script developers, especially when juggling a new language (both coding and human 😉). Let’s break down what’s going on and fix this issue.

What’s Causing the Error? #

The TypeError: Object [u'pCube1'].translateX is invalid message tells us exactly the problem: when you use %s with your selected variable, you’re passing a list instead of a single object string.

Maya’s cmds.ls(selection=True) (which I assume you’re using to get the selected cube) returns a list of selected objects—even if only one cube is selected, it comes back as [u'pCube1'], not just 'pCube1'. When you plug that list into your format string, it creates an invalid attribute path: [u'pCube1'].translateX, which Maya can’t parse.

The Fix #

You just need to extract the single object string from the selected list. Here’s how to do it properly, with error handling for when no object is selected:

# First, get the list of selected objects
selected_objects = cmds.ls(selection=True)

# Check if any objects are selected to avoid index errors
if selected_objects:
    # Grab the first (and only, in your case) selected object
    selected = selected_objects[0]
    
    # Now create your textField with the correct attribute path
    transX_value = cmds.textField(w=100, h=22, tx=cmds.getAttr("%s.translateX" % selected))
    # Repeat this pattern for transY, transZ, rotX, etc.
else:
    # Warn the user if nothing is selected
    cmds.warning("Please select an object first!")

Bonus: More Readable Formatting (Python 3/Maya 2022+) #

If you’re using Maya 2022 or later (which supports Python 3), f-strings are a cleaner way to format your attribute paths:

if selected_objects:
    selected = selected_objects[0]
    transX_value = cmds.textField(w=100, h=22, tx=cmds.getAttr(f"{selected}.translateX"))

Quick Note for Multiple Objects #

If you ever want to handle multiple selected objects later, you’d loop through the selected_objects list instead of grabbing just the first element. For now, though, this fix will get your single-object case working perfectly.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Charlotte Crouzet