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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 →

Using Maya template for creating deformer UI

Recently, a customer asked a question about creating UI for deformers. The deformer nodes in Maya are created with a table for deformer attributes e.g., But for deformer plugins, if you don’t have an AETemplate assigned for it, it looks like this, which is not as easy to understand and has extra, but unnecessary details… The first thought is about reusing the AETemplates in scripts. Unfortunately, it wasn’t created with MEL and you can’t find it inside of scripts/AETemplates. AETemplate... Read more →

How to build PyQt5 for Maya 2024

Maya 2024 is shipped with Python 3.10 only on all platforms. Although pip is shipped with Maya 2024, we still can't use it to install PyQt5 on Mac or Linux. On windows, pip installed packages could work. However, it has its own Qt5 libraries installed and it may lead to problems. You may want to replace them with the ones shipped with Maya. I didn't encounter any problems during my testing with the original pip packages. If you find any... 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 →

How to build PyQt5 for Maya 2023

Maya 2023 is shipped with Python 3.9 only on all platforms. Although pip is shipped with Maya 2023, we still can’t use it to install PyQt5 on Mac. Unlike Maya 2023 on windows, pip installed packages could work. However, it has its own Qt5 libraries installed. You may want to replace them with the ones shipped with Maya. I didn’t encounter any problems during my testing with the original pip packages. If you find any problems with it, you can... 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 →

How to build PyQt5 for Maya 2022

How to build and install PyQt5 for Maya 2022 Python 3. 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 →

How to build PyQt5 for Autodesk Maya 2020

Written by Cyrille Fauvel – Autodesk Developer Network (April 2013) Updated by Chengxi Li and Lanh Hong - Autodesk Developer Network (December 2019) Building SIP and PyQt for Maya 2020 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... Read more →

How to build PyQt5 for Autodesk Maya 2019

Written by Cyrille Fauvel - Autodesk Developer Network (April 2013) Updated by Lanh Hong and Chengxi Li - Autodesk Developer Network (January 2019) Building SIP and PyQt for Maya 2019 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... Read more →

Maya 2019 API Updates guide

Maya 2019 release has been released now. Here is a guide based on What's New in API in Maya 2019 with some extra info. For more details, please check our documents here. Build environment: Windows and MacOSX remain unchanged. Linux is updated to CentOS/RHEL 7.x(x>=2) and using gcc 6.3.1 from DTS 6.1 Platform OS Compiler Windows Windows 7 x64 Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 Windows SDK Version 10.0.10586.0 Mac El Capitan 10.11.6 XCode 7.3.1 Linux CentOS/RHEL 7.x(x>=2) gcc 6.3.1(DTS 6.1)... Read more →

Maya 2018 Update 5 and new DevKit are available now

Autodesk just released Maya 2018 update 5 and new DevKit. You can find them at Maya Developer Center. It fixed the Mac devkit issue in previous devkit and removed a test case added accidentally (MAYA91432) . If your Update 4 devkit is working right now, you don't have to download it again. 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 Maya 2018 WPF sample not showing again after closing it

Having trouble with WPF sample in 2018 .net devkit? It is reported that dagexplorer command won't reopen a closed window in Maya 2018. This could be fixed with following modification: Replace MGlobal.executeCommand($@"catch (`showWindow ""{hostTitle}""`);"); with MGlobal.executeCommand($@"catch (`workspaceControl -e -visible true ""{hostTitle}""`);"); To make the window showing again. 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 →

Setting up Mac OS X developing environment with VSCode and makefile

I have recently refreshed my working laptop to a 2016 MBP. My previous Dell is a great laptop except it is way too big and heavy to carry around with me and I need OS X environment for supporting sometimes, so I decided to make my Mac a daily working machine and my previous laptop became a supplemental machine for windows and linux platform. The new MBP comes with OS X 10.12 Sierra. When I tried to start Xcode 6.1.1... 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 →

How to build PyQt5 for Autodesk Maya 2017 64bit

Written by Cyrille Fauvel – Autodesk Developer Network (April 2013) Updated by Vijaya Prakash – Autodesk Developer Network (November 2016) Chengxi Li - Autodesk Developer Network (June 2017) Building SIP, and PyQt for Maya 2017 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... 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 →

How to write an Arnold Translator for MPxSurfaceShapes

If you are wondering why your fancy geometry created with MPxSurfaceShape is not working in renderers like Arnold, then this article is for you. Before rendering them, you'll need to create a translator or shader for your renderer. For Arnold, it can be handled using extensions. To make a 3rd-party plugin work with Arnold, you'll need to write translator extension for it.There are three SDKs you are going to refer to in your project. Arnold SDK, mtoa SDK and Maya... Read more →

How to import/export Render Setup with Python

Render setup is very useful for managing render layers and it can import and export render layers for later usage. However, the information on how to import/export it in Python is quite sparse. After doing some research on our testing code, I found that it is quite easy. There is renderSetup.decode and renderSetup.encode for import and export, respectively. The prototype for decode is decode(jsonObject, importOption, optionalPrefix), where - the jsonObject is the json string you'll need to import; - the... 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 →

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 →

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 →

How to build customized QT 5.6.1 for Maya 2017 on Windows

I've written an article about how to build PySide2 earlier. Some partners were asking about how to build QT 5.6.1 This is a guide for building QT 5.6.1 on windows. Prerequisite: Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 or Update 5 QT 5.6.1 Ruby 2.1.7(32 bits) Perl for OpenSSL JOM (recommended) Build Steps: 1. Download and unzip the tarball from the Autodesk open source distribution page Depending on how you extracted the tar file, you may need to remove the ending digits... Read more →

Make RenderTarget larger than 4k in Maya 2016 and 2016 Extension 2

There is a restriction for Maya 2016 that doesn't allow Maya to use more than 4k textures. As a result, the size of Viewport 2 MRenderTarget is limited to 4096x4096. We've opened a back door to remove this restriction and allow users to use the maximum texture size supported by their graphics card. This is now possible due to a new environment value introduced in Maya 2016 SP6 and 2016 Extension 2 + SP1. This variable is named: MAYA_VP2_USE_GPU_MAX_TARGET_SIZE, you... Read more →

How to rebuild PySide2 for Maya 2017

Maya 2017 is moving to QT 5.6.1 and PySide2. PySide2 is currently still in alpha stage, so it's not as stable as it could be. We will continue to update it in our service packages. However, if you want to upgrade yourself, you can download and build it easily. Maya 2017 is built with MSVC2012, so we cannot introduce other vc runtime in our build environment. So we will build QT 5.6.1 with MSVC2012 and the Python shipped with Maya.... Read more →

Avoid DG evaluation caused by maya.cmds when there are python custom nodes in the scene in parallel mode

I ran into an issue about Maya 2016 extension 2 hanging earlier this week. The customer has a custom locator node in their scene and Maya hangs when running code like below: import maya.cmds as cmds cmds.evaluationManager(mode="parallel") for i in range(10): cmds.currentTime(i) After spending some time for debugging, the issue was found. It turns out that when Maya is executing Python, it will acquire a Python lock for the interpreter. During the parallel evaluation of your scene caused by cmds.currentTime,... 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 →

Tips for the “name” attribute of connect element in the Fragment graph

Today, we are going to look at a little bit inside of fragment graph's connect element. For the first two attributes, from and to are self-explanatory. Essentially this allows connecting from one fragment's output to another fragment's input. However, the “name” attribute is not well explained. The fragment graph is designed like the dependency graph in Maya. Connecting different nodes and having outputs after running through a series of fragments you'll get the result. But unlike the dependency graph, the... Read more →

The idle queue isn't 100% a queue

This week, I ran into a strange problem with a multi-threading Python case from a partner. def foo(): for i in range(10): print i # call from main thread foo() # call from separate thread import threading mythread = threading.Thread(target=foo) mythread.start() The output is quite strange: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 The child thread's output order is reversed, how did that happen? After spending some... Read more →

How to delete the scriptJob if it is created with parent (-p) flag after specified QWidget is closed

After creating a Qt window with PySide.you may want to assign a scriptJob window to it and remove the job after the window is closed with -p flag. For example in the following code: import maya.cmds as cmds import maya.OpenMayaUI as omui import PySide.QtCore as QtCore import PySide.QtGui as QtGui from shiboken import wrapInstance mayaPtr = omui.MQtUtil.mainWindow() mayaWindow = wrapInstance(long(mayaPtr), QtGui.QWidget) scriptJobWindow = QtGui.QMainWindow(parent = mayaWindow) scriptJobWindow.setObjectName('scriptJobWindow') scriptJobWindow.setWindowTitle('scriptJobWindow') scriptJobWindow.show() def scriptJob(): print "scriptJob callback" jobNum = cmds.scriptJob(p="scriptJobWindow", e= ["SelectionChanged",scriptJob]) But... 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 →

Make MPxSurfaceShape selectable in Viewport 2 - Non-highlighted Maya 2016 Extension 2 API Changes

In Maya 2016, several APIs were introduced but marked as Not implemented or not mandatory. Some of them are now fully implemented in Maya 2016 Extension 2, and actually now required in your plug-in code. The Completion of native Viewport 2.0 selection feature is one of them. If you wonder why Maya 2016 had some ‘Not implemented’ API but signature present, it was to help binary compatibility between Maya 2016 versions of the plug-ins using these API. However, as you... Read more →

Maya 2016 Extension 2 installation issues - License(CLIC) and environment variables

If you have facing the issue below (CLIC Version Mismatch) after installing Maya 2016 Extension 2, it might be caused by having installed a previous version of an Autodesk beta software like Maya Preview Releases, and you did not uninstall it before prior installing the retail version. CLIC Version Mismatch To solve the problem, make sure to uninstall the Autodesk License Service on your computer, and next install the license service shipped with the Maya 2016 Extension 2. You can... Read more →

Get image from M3dView::readColorBuffer in Viewport 2

Although the API is marked as obsolete, it is the easiest way to get a screenshot from Viewport in Maya and many plug-ins are still using it. But if you are trying to get a MImage from Viewport 2, you may have some problem with your previous Python code like this. import maya.OpenMaya as openmaya import maya.OpenMayaUI as openmayaUI view = openmayaUI.M3dView.active3dView() img = openmaya.MImage() view.readColorBuffer(img) This code will not work because in Viewport 2, the image is stored as... Read more →

Maya to be included in One LISP campaign

We are moving towards the cloud nowadays. I've heard some news from 3ds Max guys and they are going to add JavaScript support in the near future. It is wonderful for cloud products like A360 Cloud rendering services in 3ds Max. For the desktop products, we have some a similar movement in Maya. There are lots of programming languages for Autodesk developers today, like MAXScript, MEL, JavaScript, Python, C++, etc. But above all, AutoLISP should be most important, it is... 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 →

Use python to update attributes in XGen

Last week, somebody asked me how to update attributes in XGen. I found that there isn’t many XGen Python API examples. Some of XGen’ source code is included in your Maya folder \plug-ins\XGen\scripts\xgenm. It is always a good idea to take a look there for reference. The XGen Python module is called xgenm. We’ll use the functions inside this package to update the XGen descriptors. If you read the document in our website, you can find xgenm.xgGlobal is mentioned. It... 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 →

Day on Intel buzz workshop

On October 28. Zhong and I attended a game workshop hosted by Intel in Shanghai. The show is mainly for the indie gaming developers and Html5. First, Intel demonstrated their XDK, which is pretty impressive for cross-platform Html5 development. It is based on Apache Cordova and has an optimized game browser: crosswalk. The improvement of crosswalk is significant, its performance is closing to the native games. Using Html5 to develop mobile games or apps becomes promising. Later, Cocos studio presented... Read more →

Writing a Mental Ray shader for Maya and relate it to a Maya custom node

Mental Ray is the renderer shipped with Maya by default. To make your custom node working with Mental Ray becomes a natural question for every Maya developer. The Mental Ray renderer can use the Maya shader network, but because it is a different rendering system (provided by NVIDIA), it cannot use the shader node in Maya directly. For this reason, Autodesk has developed a shader bridge between Mental Ray and Maya. You can develop a Mental Ray shader easily and... Read more →