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Maya 2025 API Update guide

The guide is based on What’s New in the Maya Devkit in Maya 2025 with some extra info. The details could be found [here in the document](https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYADEV/2025/ENU/?guid=2025-Whats-New-in-API). ## Building environment In Maya 2025, the building environment changes on Mac. Operating System Requirements Windows Visual Studio 2022 (17.8.3 or higher) | macOS Xcode version 14.3 or higher | Linux RHEL or Rocky Linux 8.6 or higher, DTS-11 with gcc 11.2.1 | The minimum version of CMake required is 3.27.3. ## Migration... Read more →

Maya 2024 API Update guide

The guide is based on What’s New in the Maya Devkit in Maya 2024 with some extra info. For more details including commands and scripts changes, please checkout the documentation for more details. Building environments In Maya 2024, we made significent changes on the building environment. The minimum supported version of CMake has been updated to 3.22.1. Platform OS Building Environment Windows - Visual studio 2022, .NET 4.8.1 Linux RHEL 8.6+ DTS-11 + gcc 11.2.1 Mac - Xcode 13.4+, macOS... Read more →

Maya 2023 API Update guide

The guide is based on What’s New in the Maya Devkit in Maya 2023 with some extra info. For more details including commands and scripts changes, please checkout the documentation for more details. Our Maya documentation team is also interested to know how impactful Developer documentation improvements have been over the past few releases. If you have a moment, please take this short survey to help us improve and know what is most important for you. Building environments The building... Read more →

Maya 2020 API update guide

The guide is based on What's New in the Maya Devkit in Maya 2020 with some extra info. Check the Maya documentation for the most up to date information. For Mac users, Apple has introduced notarization since OS X 10.14.5 and it is going to be enforced for Applications after 10.15. It requires the host application to declare entitlements for the plug-ins. Although Maya is the parent application, you should be aware that it may cause your plug-in to fail... Read more →

Maya 2018 Update 4 and new DevKit are available now

Autodesk just released Maya 2018 update 4 and new DevKit. You can find them at Maya Developer Center. On Mac, lib files that required for building devkit plugins and standalone applications are located in Maya.app folder. This is incorrect and will be addressed in a future release. To workaround this, you can either: 1) Create a folder named "lib" under devkitBase and copy lib files from Maya.app/Contents/MacOS and Maya.app/Contents/Resources to the newly created lib folder Or 2) Update linker paths... Read more →

Workaround for MRenderItem::setMatrix may not working with transform matrix in Maya 2018 Update 2

I've received a report of MRenderItem::setMatrix is not working with transform matrix recently. After doing some test, it seems to be only occurring with Maya 2018 Update 2 using OpenGL mode. Our engineers found it is an issue in code and will fix it in the future releases. Some tests in VP2 are being done in the wrong order, resulting in stale matrix data being used to render the item. We can mitigate this issue by manually querying the MDrawContext... Read more →

How to build PyQt5 for Autodesk Maya 2018 64bit

Written by Cyrille Fauvel – Autodesk Developer Network (April 2013) Updated by Chengxi Li - Autodesk Developer Network (August 2018) Building SIP, and PyQt for Maya 2018 PyQt [https://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk] is a python binding to the Qt library. Because Maya uses Qt internally, you can use the PyQt modules in Maya python scripts to create custom UI. PyQt does not have the same licensing as Maya, Qt, or Python. Please consult the PyQt website for information about licensing for PyQt. Download... Read more →

Maya 2018 Devkit is on ADN extranet now

This is a quick update for Maya 2018 Devkit since our partners are asking about this. I am sorry for the late, but the Maya 2018 Devkit is available on our ADN extranet now, if you are ADN member, you can download it there directly. We are also working on to upload it to Autodesk App Store and Maya Developer Center, I will update the progress here. Read more →

New API changes for Maya 2018

Another big time for the 2018 release of M&E products, the following products are released on July 25: Maya 2018 Arnold SDK 5.0 MotionBuilder 2018 Mudbox 2018 Entertainment Creation Suite Ultimate 2018 Maya Entertainment Creation Suite Standard 2018 3ds Max Entertainment Creation Suite Standard 2018 Maya 2018 with Softimage For our 3rd party developers, it means you should check out the new APIs and upgrade your plugin to support the latest versions. If you are in our Beta forum, you... Read more →

Depth fix for footPrintNode samples

We received a report that footprint samples aren't working properly. It turns out that the depthPriority wasn't implemented correctly. The original samples are using fixed depth(5) and when the node is duplicated, the old one is still on top of it. We can determine a proper depth with MGeometryUtilities::displayStatus. unsigned int depthPriority; switch(MHWRender::MGeometryUtilities::displayStatus(path)) { case MHWRender::kLead: case MHWRender::kActive: case MHWRender::kHilite: case MHWRender::kActiveComponent: depthPriority = MHWRender::MRenderItem::sActiveWireDepthPriority; break; default: depthPriority = MHWRender::MRenderItem::sDormantFilledDepthPriority; break; } You also have to replace the depth settings.... 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 →

Suggestions & Best practices while migrating your plugin to Parallel Evaluation

As we know, starting from Maya 2016, Maya introduces a new evaluation model that enabled better utilization of computer resources by distributing computation over all available cores and taking advantage of GPU compute power. Unlike previous versions of Maya, which was limited to node-level parallelisms, Maya now includes a mechanism for scene-level analysis and parallelization. For example, if your scene contains different characters that are unconstrained to one another, Maya can evaluates each character at the same time. At the... 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 →

How to set default value for array attributes

We were asked some array questions recently, and I found that there isn't a good sample in Maya devkit. This article will demonstrate how to initialize an array with MArrayDataBuilder. MPxNode::Compute isn't a good choice to give your array a default value. The reasons are that the compute will be called after a plug is dirty, or it will be connected on demand. The proper way to give your array a default value is to use the MPxNode::postConstructor method. For... Read more →

Use a node as input for your custom node

Sometimes we want to use a node as input for our custom nodes, and would like our custom node to be updated whenever our input is changed. Usually, we will create a message attribute with MFnMessageAttribute on our custom node and register callbacks to deal with it. The message attributes will never participate in dirty propagation, it is only for making connections. For example, sometimes we would like to connect a camera to our custom node and update it with... 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 →

How to create a Super sampling render override - a tutorial for MRenderTarget usage in MRenderOverride

Recently we were asked how to implement super sampling for a viewport render override. It requires you to create new render targets to replace the original ones. The MRT sample is very good at showing how to do it, however it is too complex to begin with. So we'll create a new one based on the simplest sample - viewOverrideSimple. The full code can be found on GitHub here. The original sample has three render operations: scene, HUD and present.... Read more →

Maya 2017 : New MPxSelectionContext APIs

In Maya 2017, there are 4 new API’s are exposed in MPxSelectionContext class namely setAllowPreSelectHilight(), setAllowSoftSelect(), setAllowSymmetry(), setAllowDoubleClickAction(). Please go through the following link for how to use the selection tool. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2017/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-60FD5F79-AC1D-46DE-B66D-2FBE73E15A30-htm.html In UI method, you can enable/disable and use all the selection methods. However, it is possible to use the same functionalities using MEL and C++ API. MEL way to enable/disable Soft Selection: Soft modelling is an option that allows for reflection of basic manipulator actions such as move,... 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 →

Two quick API tips for Maya - image sample in devkit and registerCommand in Maya 2016.5

We have encountered two simple API changes recently, but they each can cause some confusion. Image Sample issues The first one is the image extension sample in Maya devkit. It is used for creating image extension for adding extra image format support in Maya. It is located in devkit/image folder. It appears above mentioned sample and its document haven't been updated for a while, and there are two small issues inside of it. Imf.lib is renamed to imfbase.lib now and... Read more →

Support XGen Interactive Grooming feature in your plugin

Starting from Maya 2017, the Maya team introduced a great improvement to the XGen feature, called “Interactive hair and fur grooming with XGen”. The improvement provides a full range of tools, including sculpting brushes, modifiers, and sculpting layers, dedicated to creating all styles of hair and fur. Interactive grooming descriptions and modifiers are Maya-based nodes, and therefore they can be manipulated in the Node Editor. The cool thing is that these nodes are computed on your system's GPU instead of... Read more →

Maya Extension Attributes

Extension attributes are really helpful when plugin developers want to add more attributes to a plugin without modifying the existing plugin code. In Maya, there are many ways to add/remove the extension attributes like MEL way, Python way and C++ API way as well. MEL Way to add/remove extension attributes: To add extension attribute, use addExtension command To remove extension attribute, use deleteExtension command To list only extension attribute of an object use "listAttr -ex object" Example: // Create unknown... Read more →

Add your new context in UV Texture Editor

Well, it’s pretty easy to add a command into Maya, and I also believe most of our plugin developers know how to add a context/tool within Maya (Context is actually presented with the name “tool” in Maya), if you are not familiar with that, please refer the Command plug-ins section of help doc for the details. In general, contexts in Maya are modes which define how mouse interaction will be interpreted. A context can execute commands, modify the current selection,... Read more →

The trap while working with API MFnSet::isMember()

While working with Maya, sometimes, we create a set to handle multiple elements as a whole. We can add DG nodes, DAG components or plugs to the set and MFnSet is used to operate with the set, but there is one trap with the API that you need to know. Most of time, the API works well, the issue only happens when checking for a given DAG node component by MFnSet::isMember(const MDagPath& path, const MObject& component, MStatus* st). Currently, if... Read more →

Light Draw Override in Viewport 2.0

If you use MPxDrawOverride class to override the draw of your custom locator class, you will have to register the draw override as below: static MString drawdb("drawdb/geometry/light/customLight"); static MString sDrawRegistrantId("customLightDraw"); plugin.registerNode("customLight", customLightNode::m_id, customLightNode::creator, customLightNode::initialize, MPxNode::kLocatorNode, &drawdb); MHWRender::MDrawRegistry::registerDrawOverrideCreator(drawdb, sDrawRegistrantId, MCustomLightDrawOverride::Creator); However, if you want your locator to be classified as light with the same drawdb as above, Maya won't treat your locator as light, because the above drawdb string is applicable only for geometry override not for light. The node will... Read more →

World position and Object position in Shader Fragment

When you write a Shader Fragment, you should use the right naming conventions. For example if you check parameters like “mayaUvCoordSemantic” the name should be “uvCoord”, for “tangent” the name should be “mayaTangentIn”. Even if you check the “Object Space Position” the name and the semantic both should be “Pm”. Check the below example. " " Read more →

How to get correct camera within multiple panes

To get the current camera of the view pane, usually, we can use the API FBRenderer::CurrentCamera to get the camera. But when there are multiple view panes, the API does not work as you expected, it always return back the camera of the 1st view pane, this is a known issue of Motionbuilder. So how to get the correct camera for the specified view pane? There are 2 different situations. First, let’s take a look at this example, if you... Read more →

Drawing and Selection tips in VP2.0

We have 2 options to draw the icon/geometry in VP2.0. The first one is using MUIDrawManager object, and another one is MRenderOverride. If you are developing a plugin using Maya node, both MUiDrawManager and MrenderOverride objects are available at any point in the implementation. One issue is that if you are trying to draw the geometry/icon in a callback like postRenderMsgCallback(), VP2.0 would already have finished the drawing at that time, and the MUIDrawManager object won’t be available. In this... Read more →

Compiler versions for Maya 2017

This is an update on previous posts for older versions which can be found here: Maya 2016 Extension 2, Maya 2016,Maya 2015, Maya 2014, Maya 2008 to 2013. Basically, the build environment of Maya 2017 does not change, it’s same as Maya 2016 extension 2, and also almost same as Maya 2016. The main change for Maya 2017 is the version of Qt and PySide, the details are listed as follow and the updated ones are marked in red with... Read more →

Enable component selection for MPxSubsceneOverride of apiMeshShape sample

In Maya 2016 Extention 2, Autodesk has completed the native Viewport 2 implementation, and it is now the main viewport. There are many new APIs introduced and I've already posted a blog about Make MPxSurfaceShape selectable in Viewport 2 that was a different change in Maya 2016 Extension 2. Today, I am going to talk about another change for the MPxSubsceneOverride. MPxSubsceneOverride::getInstancedSelectionPath and MPxSubsceneOverride::getSelectionPath are very important for the native Viewport 2 selection, especially for the component selection. When selecting... Read more →

Maya 2017 devkit - Building Qt plug-ins instructions

For the Qt plug-ins, these are the recent changes made that are not reflected in the documentation but are important to know. Using the qmake executable and its qt.conf file from the devkit archive is recommended. The use of this qt.conf file uses MAYA_LOCATION and DEVKIT_LOCATION to locate the expected header/library files. Therefore, users must set both environment variables before building the samples. DEVKIT_LOCATION should point to the directory where the devkit include, mkspecs, cmake directories are located. After running... Read more →

MFn::kFluid and MFn::KFluidData attribute connection and limitation

We can create an attribute(typed attribute) using the following Maya C++ API MFnTypedAttribute has 2 overload methods for creating attribute. MObject create (const MString &fullName, const MString &briefName, const MTypeId &id, MObject defaultData=MObject::kNullObj, MStatus *ReturnStatus=NULL) MObject create (const MString &fullName, const MString &briefName, MFnData::Type type, MObject defaultData=MObject::kNullObj, MStatus *ReturnStatus=NULL) Here is the sample code MObject fluidType::outGrid; MStatus stat; MFnTypedAttribute tAttr; outGrid = tAttr.create("outGrid", "ogd", MFn::kFluid, MObject::kNullObj, NULL); if (outGrid.isNull()) cerr << "object is null" << endl; tAttr.setWritable(false); tAttr.setStorable(false); If we... 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 →

How to remove the white outline in the RenderView

The MRenderView::updatePixels API has an annoying side-effect of showing a white outline. For example, calling it in the default way on a rectangle will show it like this: There is an undocumented API available that can alleviate this problem. You can call the MRenderView::setDrawTileBoundary(false) method after startRender and it will disable Maya from drawing the outline. Unfortunately, this API is currently marked for deprecation. But we have discussed this with our engineering team, and they agree it is an acceptable... 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 →

Create shader fragments as input for stock shader and other shaders

The shader fragment feature was introduced into Maya a few years ago and it is very useful for creating and extending shader features of Maya. Shader fragments can be used for creating input or output for existing hardware shaders. I am going explain how it works with two samples in our devkit. The first sample is VP2BlinnShader and it uses blinn stock shader as hardware shader. Another sample is fileTexture and it uses shader fragment to implement a fileTexture node.... Read more →

What should I do when elementByPhysicalIndex failed?

The other day, I encountered a problem when I tried to write a sample for Maya 2016. When I was trying to get an element in an array using a physical index, it worked fine most of the time. But it failed, when I was trying to get the elements inside a CV array. This time it returned an incorrect number of elements and thrown an error when I was accessing the array. It turned out that physical index is... Read more →

How to make your plugin node as thread-safe for parallel DG Evaluation

Take this example: Let’s take very simple DG setup. A locator whose transform is connected to two compute nodes (spliceMayaNode1 and spliceMayaNode2), each of which computes something heavy. The results are then added together in a third node (spliceMayaNode3) from the plugin, and that result drives a locator. The nodes use dynamic attributes so you have to use setDependentsDirty() to declare the outputs that are affected by which inputs. If you comment out the code that adds plugs to the... 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 →

Maya 2016, Parallel Evaluation and New API’s

When you start Maya 2016, you will automatically be in parallel evaluation mode. This is new default evaluation mode, replacing the legacy DG-based evaluation. Maya 2016 uses the DG’s dirty propagation mechanism to build the Evaluation Graph(EG). Dirty propagation is the process of walking through the DG, from animation curves to renderable objects, and marking attributes on DG nodes as needing to be re-evaluated (i.e., dirty). Unlike previous version of Maya that propagated dirty on every frame, Maya 2016 disables... Read more →

Registering a plug-in to work with Maya archive

To add external dependencies to the archive created by Maya with "File" --> "Archive Scene", a plug-in developer needs to implement the MPxNode::getFilesToArchive() method. The documentation is [here](http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2016/ENU/?guid=__cpp_ref_class_m_px_node_html). This will add the plug-in node's external dependencies to the archive. While you are at it, you can add any file paths to Maya’s File Path Editor UI using this command: filePathEditor –registerType "myNode1.filePath" –typeLabel "Custom" If you wish to add the external dependencies to metadata in the Maya file itself, use... 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 →

Some tips about the life cycle of Maya thread pool

Maya provides a class named MThreadPool to help developers to create or reuse a thread pool, if you want to know more about this, you can check out the online SDK here. If you want to know how to use MThreadPool, besides the above link, you can check out our 2 samples, threadTestCmd and threadTestWithLocksCmd in the Maya devkit. In the 2 samples mentioned above, you will see that MThreadPool is actually released twice by using MThreadPool::release(). The big question... 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 →

Maya compiler versions (update)

This is an update on previous posts for older versions which can be found here: Maya 2015, Maya 2014, Maya 2008 to 2013. Maya 2016 Windows 64bit Win7x64 Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 + Win 8 SDK .Net framework 4.5.1 Intel Composer XE 2015 Initial release (15.0.0.108) Linux 64bit RHEL/CentOS 6.5, FC20 gcc 4.8.2 Intel Composer XE 2015 Update 1 (15.0.1.133) Note: For our internal builds on RHEL/CentOS 6.5, we use Red Hat DTS 2.1 to have gcc 4.8.2, plug-in... Read more →

Evaluating Node Attribute

Often in times, when people are grabbing attribute values working with Dependency Graph (DG) Nodes, people stumble across the situation what is the best way to access attribute values. At a first glance, it looks both MPlug and MDataHandle can access attribute values and both of them would work. However there are some caveats that you need to be aware when you choose to use one instead of the other: One distinct difference between MPlug and MDataHandle way to access... Read more →

Writing an FBX importer / Exporter plug-in

While I am working on a WEBGL project, I wanted to share some hints I had to work through with you. The FBX documentation isn't clear on every steps, is a bit out of date even if it fairly easy to identify the pieces to update and spread all over the place. I hope that post will help on this. The project I am working on is a glTF importer / exporter. glTF is a specification (under development) for WEBGL... 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 →

Maya Profiler

Have you ever wonder why your scene is running so slow? What’s the culprit of the performance degradation? In Maya 2015 extension, we provide a new profiler tool for you to track down performance bottlenecks in your scene by recording the amount of time that each process consumes. We also provide programming interfaces to access this feature. Specifically, in MEL/Python, you can use command “profiler” to start and stop the recording of events, add profiling categories and instrument procedures for... Read more →

MNodeMessage::AttributeChangedCallback() not called on kAttributeRenamed

Consider the following Python example import maya.OpenMaya as OM import maya.cmds def test (msg, plug, otherplug, *clientData): if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kConnectionMade: print "connection made" if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kConnectionBroken: print "connection broken" if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kAttributeEval: print "attribute eval" if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kAttributeSet: print "attribute set" if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kAttributeLocked: print "attribute locked" if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kAttributeUnlocked: print "attribute unlocked" if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kAttributeAdded: print "attribute added" if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kAttributeRemoved: print "attribute removed" if msg & maya.OpenMaya.MNodeMessage.kAttributeRenamed: print "attribute renamed"... Read more →