Around the Corner

Recent new releases (Nov. 2016)

It’s really a big month for Autodesk M&E customers and partners. Why do I say that? Here are the new versions of products that were just released within this month: Autodesk Stingray 1.6 version. Stingray 1.6 is now available for download via your Autodesk Account, Autodesk Knowledge Network, and Steam. For more information about this update version, please refer to the Stingray V1.6 Release Notes in the online documentation. Stingray 1.6 also includes the FBX SDK 2017.1 security update. Autodesk... Read more →

ADN Devdays @ AU Las Vegas 2014

Back from HackZurich, one of the Hackathons we are sponsoring this year. The winners had a good VR solution based on WebGL for viewing, 2 smart phones to create a stereo camera. That was neat... Once again, we will present the ADN Developer Conference - DevDays on December 1st (the day before AU) where 3ds Max and Maya engineering will introduce the new APIs in the upcoming releases and DevHack, a drop-in programming workshop on December 2nd. We will also... Read more →

backer for Project PERCEPTION NEURON

It’s amazing that a new company can compete with established MoCap hardware providers for 1/70 of the price, yet maintain the same level of quality - A level of quality which is seen in Hollywood Film production. Noitom Technology Ltd. based in Beijing succesfully funded their Perception Neuron project on Kickstarter. This is an assemble-it-yourself inertial mocap system that aims to give users a complete full-body capture solution. During the week-end they met their goal of USD 250k easily. Zhong... Read more →

API wishlist surveys - 2014

This year’s API wishlist surveys for Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max are now live: Autodesk Maya Autodesk 3ds Max Our Engineering teams use the results from these surveys to help steer their ongoing API development priorities, release on release. If you have feedback or specific requests regarding our APIs, this is a great way to get them in front of the right people inside Autodesk. The deadline for completing these surveys is – August 1st, 2014 – so if... Read more →

Hiring a Media and Entertainment API evangelist!

Do you get excited by APIs? Do you enjoy hacking wicked-cool technology together to solve your daily challenges? While your friends are binge-watching “Grimm” or playing “Minecraft” for hours on end, are you coding cool tools to help make content for those types of titles? If any of the above is true, then we want to talk to YOU! If you are enthusiastic about M&E technologies, enjoy interacting with others and sharing this enthusiasm, and loves to evangelize code –then... Read more →

Now Announcing 3ds Max and Maya 2015

I've just arrived home from a 30-day trip to the Bay Area and Neuchatel. It was a really interesting trip – as usual – but I'm happy to be home (even if I’m writing this on a Sunday morning, once again trying to catch up on many things you cannot really do while travelling). The release happened really few days ago and it seems timely for me to talk about the updates more from a developer’s perspective. This year you... Read more →

Still not registered for the free developer conference?

ADN Hunter If you are attending the Free ADN developer conference at AU next week, Photograph these rare animals at DevDay and AU for a chance to win an iPad Mini We’d love to meet you and talk to you about the amazing things you are doing with Autodesk technology so to encourage you to say “hi” and to make it fun, we’re running a small competition. The rules are simple: Download the AU Mobile App Track down as many... Read more →

Announcing the Autodesk Exchange Apps Portathon – and an opportunity to receive US$100 per app published!

We are excited to announce the inaugural Autodesk® Exchange Apps Portathon – a 48 hour virtual web based coding “festival”. The Exchange Apps Portathon is a community event where you’ll have the opportunity to work closely with Autodesk engineers in real time and meet hundreds of other Autodesk software partners from around the world. It is all designed to help you get your apps ready and published on Autodesk Exchange Apps. The Portathon will run for 48 hours, starting from... Read more →

3ds Max and Maya SP1 debug available now.

What are symbols? Symbols or Program Database Files (PDBs) are a by-product of the build process and contain debugging information for specific binary modules (e.g. exe or dll files). By default, a C++ PDB file contains the following information: Public symbols (typically all functions, static and global variables) A list of object files that are responsible for sections of code in the executable Frame pointer optimization information (FPO) Name and type information for local variables and data structures Source file... Read more →

Localization strategies for 3ds Max Plug-ins

With the coming localized Autodesk Exchange stores, it is becoming more important for plug-in developers to localize their software. The exchange store provides a unique opportunity to be in front of customers all over the world. The best experience for a customer is to provide your software in their localized language. This post is meant to provide the resources to help you understand the localization of 3ds Max plug-ins and supporting customization files. C++ based plug-ins 3ds Max is now... Read more →

Exchange App Webinar

Register and mark your calendars now for this upcoming webcast on making the most of the Autodesk Exchange Apps store ... "How developers can ride and profit from the adoption wave of Autodesk Exchange Apps" The Autodesk Exchange Apps stores (currently there are 15 stores) are a huge opportunity for developers to gain direct access to the growing number of Autodesk customers using Exchange Apps. In just one year there’s been over one million visits and over 250,000 downloads. With... Read more →

API wishlist surveys - Spring 2013

This year’s API wishlist surveys for Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max are now live: Autodesk Maya Autodesk 3ds Max Our Engineering teams use the results from these surveys to help steer their ongoing API development priorities, release on release. If you have feedback or specific requests regarding our APIs, this is a great way to get them in front of the right people inside Autodesk. The deadline for completing these surveys is – July 28th, 2013 – so if... Read more →

API webcast archives

As part of our ADN Open work to move our API content to more accessible (search-engine-findable) locations, I'm posting our webcast archives to this blog. Some of these recordings are old now, but still contain useful information for people on legacy releases. And, being recordings of live webcasts, they are not as polished as our DevTV recordings. Note that the developer center pages contains additional material which go along the latest training webcast listed below. 3ds Max - http://www.autodesk.com/develop3dsmax Title... Read more →

Using Global Interpreter Locks (GIL) when developing Python code in C++

Python uses a Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) to ensures that Python code in only executing in a single thread at a time. When you use the Python C API and/or expose C++ code to Python, you have to re-acquire the GIL each time you call in a C Python API. This is also true when writing Python extensions for Maya or when using the Python C API from a Maya plug-ins. You will need to add these calls in a... Read more →

Distributing plug-ins/files on Maya (and 3ds Max)

You probably remember this article where I described in details how to work with Maya Modules and integrate your files and plug-ins in Maya. This time, I am going to explain what changes were made in Maya to support the Autodesk Exchange Store. To submit an application / content package on Autodesk Exchange Store, you need to follow few but important rules. The application should be self-contained and easy to install for example. Self-contained means that all files should go... Read more →

a New Distribution Channel for Maya & 3ds Max

With the release of Maya 2014 and 3ds Max 2014 the Autodesk Exchange site makes it easier for plug-in, content, and tutorial developers to distribute and sell their content more easily to Autodesk customers. This is a new channel to make new customers and does not necessarily means that you have to switch from your existing distribution channel to this one entirely. You should really see that as a new oportunity for you and your future customers to work together.... Read more →

Maya, 3ds Max, SoftImage, Mudbox, MotionBuilder 2014 for developers

Following the new "origami" theme Tomorrow will be the first day where the 2014 family of Autodesk products will be available around the world. You’ll no doubt find lots of information on the interwebs regarding the product’s features (including the AREA), so I’m going to focus specifically on the opportunities – and requirements – the new release presents to developers. Firstly, ADN members should refer to the (as ever) thorough information produced by the ADN team and posted under the... Read more →

Using FBX SDK to make animated user properties that are compatible with 3ds Max

A huge thanks to Kevin Vandecar, who supports both FBX and 3ds Max in the ADN M&E team working with me, and provide the original article for this post. This is a topic coming from one of our FBX SDK customers recently. Basically the animated properties were coming into MotionBuilder correctly, and after being exported from MotionBuilder would also come into 3ds Max properly. However, when coming directly into 3ds Max, the properties were not visible. First, note that there... Read more →

ADN Conference recordings available

Not that it is something really new as they've been posted late December for most of them, but last week we posted all the public ones on Area. You may remember an invite posted last June for people to present at the ADN conference. These videos are the one people who were accepted presented. Other recordings will remain accessible to ADN members only until May/June time as they contain confidential information on 3ds Max & Maya, ... next releases. Adding... Read more →

Vote for Visual Studio x64 Edit-and-Continue

A colleague in one of our product development teams pinged me today to ask for my support in voting up this request for Microsoft to implement x64 edit-and-continue. I’m sure this isn’t the first time this topic has been raised with Microsoft – but hopefully it will be the last . I went ahead and added my votes. And what’s a blog for, if not to nudge your readers into helping each other out once in a while . I... Read more →

Lost in classes

Both my class and Kevin's one at AU aren't yet full. If you haven't registered yet and going to AU, please give a stop to our classes, I promiss you'll not be disapointed. But for this you also need to register to these classes. There’s more detail on the class timing & description here: Using .NET Programming in Autodesk® Maya® Wednesday, Nov 28, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM Kevin Vandecar, for the ADN M&E team will also be presenting in... Read more →

Registration open for AU 2012

I registered for AU 2012, a week ago as the AU site was opened for employees for testing. It is now open for anyone to register to attend and receive an early bird discount of $500 (before October 15). If you’re interested in seeing what classes are scheduled for this year’s AU – which will be held from Nov 27-29 in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, Las Vegas – you can browse the class catalog online. Here are the classes I’m... Read more →

How I Plan a Tool…

This post isn’t super technical but more of peak into my thought process when creating tools, I think it is worth sharing and I would love to have other’s feedback if you have other thoughts that work for you. I was once asked by an attendee from one of my Maya API trainings if I could share some wisdom with them about writing a tool. How do I plan my work? How do I start thinking about the way I... Read more →

3ds Max and Maya API wishlist surveys closing

Just a friendly reminder that our 3ds Max and Maya API wishlist surveys closing. If you want to have a chance to influence Max and Maya API future - it is today! Autodesk Maya Autodesk 3ds Max Read more →

API wishlist surveys

This year’s API wishlist surveys for Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max are now live: Autodesk Maya Autodesk 3ds Max Our Engineering teams use the results from these surveys to help steer their ongoing API development priorities, release on release. If you have feedback or specific requests regarding our APIs, this is a great way to get them in front of the right people inside Autodesk. The deadline for completing these surveys is – July 25th, 2012 – so if... Read more →

Webcast in the making

I thought I’d mention one of the projects we’re working on in DevTech right now. While the Maya Python training as been delivered already (and recorded - see my previous post), there is more coming: MotionBuilder/OpenReality SDK (Python/C++) starting on May 29th 2012 - 1 hour per day during 9 days 3ds Max SDK (C++) starting on July 16th 2012 for English - 1 hour per day during 10 days July 30th 2012 for Japanese - 1 hour per day... Read more →

Getting started with Autodesk's APIs

Autodesk has a wide range of products that expose Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), to the point that it can be a bit overwhelming for developers new to our products. A great place to look for introductory information around developing with Autodesk software is the Developer Center on Autodesk.com: http://www.autodesk.com/developer From here you will be able to navigate to individual Developer Centers for a number of our products, some of which I’ve provided direct links to below: http://www.autodesk.com/developmaya (Maya) http://www.autodesk.com/develop3dsMax (3ds... Read more →