Around the Corner

SIGGRAPH 2019

The Forge DevTech M&E team will be attending SIGGRAPH this year! You can find me, Cheng Xi Li, Kevin Vandecar, and Denis Grigor at the Autodesk booth (#1211) in the Exhibition. Come to our booth to check out our demos and learn more about Forge. At the Autodesk booth, you can also find Maya, 3ds Max, and other Autodesk product teams there. The Exhibition hours are Tue (7/30) 9:30 AM - 6 PM, Wed (7/31) 9:30 AM - 6 PM,... Read more →

Compiler versions for Maya 2018

This is an update on previous posts, for older versions, they can be found here: Maya 2017, Maya 2016 Extension 2, Maya 2016,Maya 2015, Maya 2014, Maya 2008 to 2013. Basically, the windows build environment of Maya 2018 was upgraded to Visual Studio 2015. The details are listed as follow with links. Maya 2018 Windows 64bit: Win7x64 SP1 Visual Studio 2015 Update 3(14.0.25431.01), WindowsSDKVersion=10.0.10586.0 .Net framework 4.5.1 Intel Composer XE 2016 Update 3 (16.0.3.207) Linux 64bit: RHEL/CentOS 6.5 gcc 4.8.2(DTS... Read more →

Maya Devkit 2018 is on the way

This is a short update regarding the Maya 2018 devkit. As-is typical for the devkit, it can take a few days to get it posted after our Maya product release. We are awaiting the official release from engineering and they have told us it should be ready in the next few days. Once we receive it, we will get it posted ASAP. Please check back here for the latest information. Thank you for your patience. Read more →

Improve performance with MPxNode::preEvaluation & MPxNode::postEvaluation

With last post we talked about the Best practices while migrating your plugin to Parallel Evaluation, in this post, we will talk about the following 2 new methods, and how to make use of them to improve the performance: MPxNode::preEvaluation MPxNode::postEvaluation Within the old DG system, because MPxNode::setDependentsDirty function is called during dirty propagation, it can be used to manage attribute dirtying, and sometimes, we can cache the computed data in this method to avoid expensive calculations in MPxNode::compute. Let’s... Read more →

Integrate p4 Version Control in Motionbuilder

Version Control is an important feature for a team to work together, and Motionbuilder has its own version control manager that uses simplified versions of the Perforce and Microsoft Visual SourceSafe version control software products. But, how to set it up? How to use the provided API to operate with version control? There are very few information about this, but recently, I spent some time on this, and in what follows I will talk about how to set it up... Read more →

All about modifying reference file in Motionbuilder

I believe most of you are familiar with File Reference System, it’s commonly used in different Autodesk products, including Motionbuilder. Recently, some partners are working with file reference in Motionbuilder, they have some confusion and also find some issues. I reviewed this feature on Mobu SDK help again, and I think it worth a post to mention some important point about modifying referenced file within Motionbuilder, we will start with some questions. First of all, there are following 2 terms... Read more →

New API changes for Maya 2017 updates 2

Some of you may already know about this, but I think I still need to emphasize it again here. In the past, we used to have Service Packs and Extensions after the Maya main release. But starting from Maya 2017, we will not provide Service Packs or Extensions any more, instead, will use Maya Updates to maintain and update the software regularly, providing new features, and quicker fixes to customer issues. For our plugin developers, one important thing you should... Read more →

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 →

Render Setup improvement in Maya 2017: Interactive Sequence Rendering

The last main improvement for Render Setup feature is actually a new feature to render a sequence directly from Maya’s UI without executing a batch render (including support for loading the sequence in the Renderview for review), thanks to engineering team’s contribution, here is the detail if you are interested: Introduction Rendering of image sequences in Maya has traditionally been an offline process for the end-user via command-line or the batch render feature in Maya. This can be limiting for... Read more →

Render Setup improvement in Maya 2017: Render Settings Changes

The 2nd main improvement is about changes to render settings window callbacks to support the new workspaces UI feature, as I mentioned before, this information is also provided by our engineering team. Let’s take a look at the improvement. Introduction One of the changes introduced in Maya 2017 is the new workspaces feature. This feature includes a change that presents some problems for the Render Settings. Maya now retains the state of windows that were open in previous sessions of... Read more →

Render Setup improvement in Maya 2017: Support for AOV setups per layer and inclusion of AOV setups in exported templates

As you know in Maya 2016 Extension 2 we introduced the replacement for Maya render layers called “Render Setup”, during that period we introduced this feature to several 3rd party renderers in person. For Maya 2017 we have been making improvements to this feature that will allow for improved support for 3rd party renderers, and other recent changes have the potential to impact 3rd party renderers as well, will talk about the 3 improvements in the following separate blogs, and... Read more →

New API changes for Maya 2017 & MotionBuilder 2017

A couple of months ago, we released Maya 2016 Extension 2 and some people have asked us about Maya 2017 & MotionBuilder 2017. Now, they are here! Maya 2017 & MotionBuilder 2017 have been announced on July 26, 2016, during SIGGRAPH event. As usual, I’d like to highlight some changes/improvements on the API side. Maya API Changes: There are many API improvements in Maya 2017, especially for the Rendering feature. For all the details about API changes/improvements between Maya 2016... Read more →

Compiler versions for Maya 2016 Extension 2

This is an update on previous posts for older versions which can be found here: Maya 2016, Maya 2015, Maya 2014, Maya 2008 to 2013. Basically, the build environment of Maya 2016 extension 2 is very similar as Maya 2016 with just a few updates, I listed them as follow and marked the updated and new added items in red with links to help you find it quickly. Maya 2016 Extension 2 Windows 64bit Win7x64 Visual Studio 2012 Update 4... Read more →

Maya and the Forge APIs - Discount for Forge DevCon

To start, have you heard about the new Autodesk Forge platform? Forge is a place that gathers many new cloud service APIs into one place for consumption by developers. Forge includes the platform technology, a program for supporting partners (think ADN open on a broader scale), including a developer conference coming in June, and a fund where startups can apply for an investment by the Forge fund. What does this have to do with Maya programming concepts? Well, there are... Read more →

New API changes coming in Maya 2016 Extension 2

Again, we come to another release season, but this year things are a little different. Maya 2017 is not released as usual. Instead, we are releasing Maya 2016 Extension 2, which is also being called Maya 2016.5. Some people may ask, where is my Maya 2017? Well, Maya 2017 may come later this year. Does it mean there are not many improvements of Maya at this point? The answer is absolutely “No”! Maya 2016 extension 2 includes many updates for... Read more →

XGenRenderAPI: How to use?

Maya is using procedurals for rendering translators. One of the reason of using procedurals is because the translators of some renderers are not extensible. For example, to keep modules independent, Mentalray’s Mayatomr.mll and XGen’s libAdskXGen.dll are not linked together. This means that the code using XGenRenderAPI doesn’t require a procedural. If third party renderer doesn’t support procedural, you can directly use XGenRenderAPI in the translator. To do this, you can call XGenRenderAPI::PatchRenderer::init() to initialize XGen primitive generation, and call FaceRenderer::render()... Read more →

Autodesk Memento now available for Mac

My favourite mesh generation and manipulation tool, Autodesk Memento, is now available (in Beta) for the Mac. I’ve been part of the Alpha programme for the OS X version for some time: admittedly not very actively, but I did install a number of builds and report an error or two. I’m very happy to see the Mac version is now joining its Windows sibling in Beta. Both versions can be downloaded and installed from this page. The model shown at... Read more →

How to connect Perception Neuron with Maya (Part 2)

In the last post, I talked about the NeuronDataReader SDK and the general process to use these APIs, now we will talk about how to make a Maya plug-in client to receive and parse the animation data. With this project, we are going to create a Maya plug-in which will: fetch the animation data from Axis Neuron application to Maya, create a Neuron specific skeleton, and assign the animation data to the skeleton, retarget the animation from the skeleton to... Read more →

Don't perform heavy tasks in the MoBu Real-time engine thread, even if it worked before

Recently we received a question about crashing while calling FBPlayerControl::GotoStart() from within a real-time device engine thread. It seems working fine up to MoBu 2014, but crashes in MoBu 2015. Actually, it seems working fine in previous MoBu releases, but as the best practice, it’s not recommended because the SDK documentation clearly mentions that some methods like DeviceIONotify() and DeviceEvaluationNotify() are called by the Real-time engine thread, and they should consume as little CPU time as possible and return as... Read more →

Autodesk University Call for Proposals

The Autodesk University Call for Proposals will close on May 26th, so there's still time to submit a proposal and get free entry to AU. My colleague, Stephen Preston, being the track lead for the 'Developer' track, is particularly interested in persuading you to submit a proposal for a class or lab on an API/programming topic. Your proposal could be on an Autodesk API, but we also like to include a few classes/labs each year on general programming topics (programming... Read more →

Advantage and limitation of using MUiDrawManager in VP 2.0

VP 2.0 provides a very convenient way for plugin developers to draw some simple basic UI elements such as lines, circles, arcs, text, …. In Maya 2016, it now provides the ability to support drawing icons. By using MUiDrawManager, plugin developers do not need to consider the different GPU device, it will work for all. MUiDrawManager is very powerful, some developers mention that they are trying to use that as much as possible. Actually, we provide several interfaces for partners... Read more →

New Api changes for Maya 2016 & MotionBuilder 2016

I just came back from Montreal for our team meeting there, this is my 1st time to be there, very nice city. It’s a great opportunity to meet with my team members again who are located in different countries, and I also met many engineers in the Maya, FBX and 3ds Max team. It has been really exciting. The new release of Maya 2016 version was announced on 16th April and everything is open to public now. I cannot wait... Read more →

Fedora Core 20 gcc 4.8.2 Installation instructions

If you are trying to build and install gcc 4.8.2 from source code on Fedora Core 20 box, you will find lot of challenges to fix the dependencies. To fix that issue and to reduce the time here I have listed out the steps to be followed to get the successful build. Install build pre-requisites: Before installing gcc 4.8.2, install the build pre-requisites 1. yum groupinstall "Development tools" 2. yum install glibc-devel.i686 glibc-i686 3. yum install gcc-c++ 4. yum install... Read more →

Fix your Motion sickness or kinetosis with VR devices

Few months back, I started to work on exploring usage of the Kinect with Maya, but lately was asked to worked on many of the Autodesk Cloud Services implementation and a WEBGL implementation for the Autodesk 3D viewer. While working on this project, I had the chance to try few others things, like a VR experience using the 3d viewer (source code posted here). The 3d viewer technology was not design for VR, nor it was intended to be in... Read more →

Technical Evangelist Intern WANTED.

Are you currently pursuing a bachelor’s or master’s in Computer science or a discipline with a strong computing component? Are you looking for a life changing Internship experience during your summer? Look no more, Autodesk Developer Network is looking for an enthusiastic intern evangelist for this summer in the Bay Area. If you’re excited by design, and by working with 3D on the web then keep reading. You will start by learning the API and developing a plan for writing... Read more →

Get ready for the Autodesk Cloud Accelerator Program

Last week, I was in Melbourne and Sydney for Autodesk University Sydney and couple of meetups around game and animation. That was very cool to see people from the opposite side of the planet. As you can read, that was my first time in Australia :) But Now, I need to rush on preparing for Autodesk University in Las Vegas this time. As always in the fall time, I am late on everything. The project using the Oculus Rift and... 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 →

An online event with an opportunity to receive up to US $100 per app published and win one of eight iPad minis!

We are excited to announce the 2014 Autodesk® Exchange Apps Hackathon. While similar in concept to the Portathon that we held in 2013, this event is bigger, better, has new competitions and great prizes. Anyone can participate from anywhere in the world and at any time both before the event and during the Hackathon days. We’ve assembled a great line up of speakers to give presentations and demos on hot topics that will help your overall app development and technical... 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 →

ADN Devdays @ AU Las Vegas 2014 - Call for Proposals

I am looking for presenters for the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) M&E Conference. If you or someone you know would like the opportunity to present, please submit a proposal including the duration of your presentation. The ADN M&E Conference is a great way to share your current API’s, tips & tricks or knowledge about solving production challenges. Please keep in mind, the focus and audience of the ADN conference is developers. Classes need to have a WOW factor that speaks... Read more →

Gameware 2015 released

Announcing HumanIK 2015! HumanIK 2015 introduces a new Creature Solver, integration with Unreal Engine 4, and more! Learn more: http://autode.sk/humanik You said the problem with HumanIK was that it’s only about humans. And, we listened! Introducing the new Creature Solver in HumanIK 2015 that enables IK computations on non-human creatures with any number of limbs, tentacles, and antennae. Check it out: http://autode.sk/1ifgc9s Gameware Navigation 2015 is here! Navigation 2015 brings improved animation-driven locomotion, dynamic NavMesh, new hierarchical pathfinding, and more!... 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 →

ADN Hunter competition

The results are in: The highlight of Autodesk University for the ADN team every year is meeting you - developers using Autodesk technology - and talking about the amazing things you’re doing with Autodesk APIs. But sometimes it’s difficult to find you in the crowd. That is why, this year, we decided to turn the hunters into the hunted and award an iPad Mini prize to the three ADN partners who could track down the most members of the ADN... 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 →

3D printing tech previews on Autodesk Labs: Projects Miller and Shapeshifter

Again my apologizes for the long silence, but I was involved in finishing a project to be shown @ AU and because our ADN Devdays tour starts this week, I had to work extra hours and week-end to polish the application. Anyway, back to normal, I should write post regularly again :) For this first post, I'd like to highligh this post from Kean Walmsley. I was in Tel Aviv to work on AutoCAD 360 back in August and chat... Read more →

ADN Devdays @ AU Las Vegas 2013

Back from AU Brazil where I made an introduction to Oauth and RESTful API, and it is already time to think about AU Las Vegas and the ADN Devdays. Once again, we will present the ADN Developer Conference the day before AU where 3ds Max and Maya engineering will introduce the new APIs in the upcoming releases. We will also have eight industry lectures on making the best use of various APIs such as PySide, Python, the new 3ds Max... 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 →

3D artist uses Google Glass (and Autodesk 123d catch) to recreate sculpture

A friend forwarded me that article which is not only interesting reading because this is about new Autodesk technologies ;) - but it brings a real value in the design and the entertainment fields. I see this as a nice extension of the Kinect mesh / pointcloud capabilities but with more flexibility since you only need a camera. http://www.geek.com/android/3d-artist-uses-google-glass-to-recreate-sculpture-1559962/ Here Todd Blatt was using 123dCatch, but you could get better results using the Autodesk ReCap (currently in final Beta 3... Read more →

ADN Devdays @ AU Las Vegas 2013 - Call for Proposals

I am looking for presenters for the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) M&E Conference. If you or someone you know would like the opportunity to present, please submit a proposal including the duration of your presentation. The ADN M&E Conference is a great way to share your current API’s, tips & tricks or knowledge about solving production challenges. Please keep in mind, the focus and audience of the ADN conference is developers. Classes need to have a WOW factor that speaks... 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 →

Call for proposals: Autodesk University 2013

As many of you will now be aware, the call for proposals for AU 2013 is now open and will remain so until May 19th. It’s always great to have people presenting fresh ideas at the conference, so think about whether you have something to share with fellow Autodesk customers/partners/developers and submit a proposal or two! I'll follow-up in a few weeks with another call for presentation but for our ADN DevDays which will run just before AU (December 2nd)... 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 →

123D Creature

123D Creature is a creative modeling App that lets you build, sculpt, paint, render and 3D print original 3D characters directly on your iPad. You can check out a teaser video on YouTube here App Store page with features and additional images here Read more →

Autodesk OrgOrgChart

For something completely different than usual, here is an interesting graphical representation of the organisational changes Autodesk has been through in the last couple of years. The OrgOrgChart (Organic Organization Chart) project looks at the evolution of a company structure over time. A snapshot of the Autodesk organizational hierarchy was taken each day between May 2007 and June 2011: This representation is reminiscent of the Disk Tree visualization technique developed at Xerox Parc (Chi E.H., S.K. Card, 1999, Sensemaking of... Read more →

ADN M&E DevDays conference over ...

I arrived safely in Las Vegas for AU2012 and finally done with the ADN M&E DevDays conference. It was a lot of work to prepare and even more to deliver. But we had great success, and wonderful deep technical presentations delivered by Autodesk engineers, and external people from multiple Studios on concrete solutions and/or challenges. All presentations where good, but I wanted to highlight here to of them: Let's start by the OpenSubdiv presentation Let's start by the OpenSubdiv presentation... Read more →

Heading for Autodesk University in Las Vegas

AU is right around the corner (it's just so hard to believe!). This week is the last week before Autodesk University. Thousands are heading for Las Vegas during the week end and we will be ready for them with great speakers, classes, technology, Innovation forums, vendors, AUGI Annual meeting, entertainment and more. The ADN Developer Days on the Monday before AU will also be a great place to be to hear about what's coming next. In this final week before... 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 →