Around the Corner

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 →

Building SIP, and PyQt for Maya 2016.5

This is an updated version for Maya 2016.5' PyQt build instructions. This is an updated version of the Maya 2016 build instructions for PyQt and PySide (here). The very good news is that with Maya 2014 & onward, there is no more need to build PySide as it is coming by default in Maya :) libxml, openSSL, OpenAL, python2.7, qt-4.8.5-64 / Maya 2014/2015, qt-4.8.6-64 / Maya 2016 and tbb are also coming by default in the Maya include and lib... 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 →

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 →

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 →

Building SIP, and PyQt for Maya 2016

This is an updated version for Maya 2016' PyQt build instructions. This is an updated version of the Maya 2015 build instructions for PyQt and PySide (here). The very good news is that with Maya 2014 & 2015 & 2016, there is no more need to build PySide as it is coming by default in Maya :) libxml, openSSL, OpenAL, python2.7, qt-4.8.5-64 / Maya 2014/2015, qt-4.8.6-64 / Maya 2016 and tbb are also coming by default in the Maya include... 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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Building pywin32 for MotionBuilder 2015

Recently a customer came to ask why pywin32 do not work on Maya or MotionBuilder. The answer is very simple, Maya and MotionBuilder are compiled the lastest compiler to get the best performances and the latest technology possible. Maya itself is partially compiler with the Intel C++ compiler and Visual Studio 2012 SP4, whereas MotionBuilder uses Visual Studio 2012 SP4 only. The issue is that pywin32 and many of the Python libraries still use an older compiler, like sometimes the... 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 →

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 →

An FBX SDK iOS quick tutorial

I recently had a question on the FBX iOS SDK and while I had to use it on a ReCap Photo project, I wanted to share my experience with you. The SDK is the one used to write the FBXReview application on iOS. The FBX development team is working on an Android version right now and should come in a future release. To minimize the efforts of writing our first iOS application using the FBX iOS SDK, we will reuse... 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 →

Maya compiler versions (update)

This is an update on a previous post for older versions which can be found here. OS Compiler Maya 2015 Windows 64bit Win7x64 Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 Intel Composer XE 2013 Update 5 (13.1.3.198) Linux 64bit RHEL/CentOS 6.2, FC14 gcc 4.1.2 Intel Composer XE 2013 SP1 Update 1 (14.0.1.106) Mac 64bit Mountain Lion 10.8.5 Xcode 5.0.2 with SDK 10.8 (Mountain Lion) clang with libstdc++ Intel Composer XE 2013 SP1 Update 1 (14.0.1.103) Embedded Python 2.7.3 - Internal to Maya... Read more →

Building SIP, and PyQt for Maya 2015

This is an updated version for Maya 2015' PyQt build instructions. This is an updated version of the Maya 2014 build instructions for PyQt and PySide (here). The very good news is that with Maya 2014 & 2015, there is no more need to build PySide as it is coming by default in Maya :) libxml, openSSL, OpenAL, python2.7, qt-4.8.5-64, and tbb are also coming by default in the Maya include and lib folder, so unless you have a very... 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 →

Feeling Foolish

The ADN blog posts of April 1st were the result of the second year of our team's internal April Fools' Challenge, where we have a little friendly competition to see who can post the 'best' April Fools' article. Of course, different people like different kinds of humor, so there's never really just one 'best'. (We try to avoid posting serious articles on April 1st in case someone thinks we're joking when we're not, but one sometimes slips through due to... Read more →

3D printing: Second industrial revolution is under way

The technology is decades old, but now there’s an ecosystem in place and the technology is becoming mature. At its beginning I was really skeptical about that technology, but I recently read couple of articles changing my minds. I also met colleagues in our annual team meeting the last few days who said that most of 2d printers are now affordable and people starting to use them more frequently. So I wanted to share with you my latest findings... But... 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 →

SIP fix released

SIP v4.15.5 now contains the fix and is available on Riverbank's site. No need to patch the source code anymore. http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/sip/download Read more →

Fix for "sip.wrapinstance on Maya main window causes a hard crash"

Few month back, I wrote instructions to build PyQT for Maya 2014, but couple of weeks later someone came with a problem in using SIP with Maya. The issue was that Maya is crashing when someone tries to get the Maya handle and bind it using sip. I.e.: import sip as _sip import PyQt4.QtCore as _QtCore import PyQt4.QtGui as _QtGui import maya.OpenMayaUI as _OpenMayaUI mainWindow = _sip.wrapinstance(long(_OpenMayaUI.MQtUtil.mainWindow()), _QtCore.QObject) Hopefully, a colleague of mine Yves Boudreault investigated the issue and found... Read more →

Applying the Maya Dark Color Scheme to WPF

Sorry it's been such a long time since we all wrote a blog...we will get better at updating!!! As you know I was travelling a lot in November/December for business reasons, but I also got asked to work on few important Cloud and mobile projects lately that took me away from the R&D aspect of my job. Anyway, it is back to normal now… till next time ;) Almost 2 years back, almost around this time of the year, I... 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 →

How to check for error for MDataHandle::child()?

First if you're using the MPlug version, it cannot fail but if you're using the MObject version and if it fails, it would return an empty MDataHandle. I.e. equivalent to: MDataHandle tmp ; and its type() method should return you kInvalid. Unfortunately, if the child attribute is also a compound attribute, type() would also return kInvalid. So what's up? in order to keep MDataHandle operations fast in Maya, minimal checking is performed, which for most methods means no checking at... Read more →

@AU

Well, so far, so good! We had a great ADN session on Monday, before AU proper kicked off yesterday. Lots of opportunities to talk with old friends and new. It’s always fun to find out what people are doing with our technology and hopefully to help address some of the snags they’ve hit along the way. The only downside for me is that the attendance wasn't as high as last year ;) something I need to work on because I... 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 →

FBMenu stops working after an exception was raised

When code associated with a custom menu item raises an exception, the menu item can no longer be executed for that session of MotionBuilder. Steps: Load and execute the script below From the New Menu, select 'SubMenu 1' Observe in the Python window that an exception is displayed in the output From the New Menu, select 'SubMenu 1' Observe that nothing is output. from pyfbsdk import * def eventMenu(control, event): raise Exception('kill this menu item') menuMgr = FBMenuManager() menuMgr.InsertFirst(None, "New... Read more →

PySide/PyQt and Maya Undo not good friends

Calling Maya commands from PySide/PyQt using MEL and/or their Python wrappers will display strange messages on the Maya console during undo/redo operation, and oftenly creates concerns if this a bug, or something gets wrong. Not at all - that is a side effect of how the command is called by the different interpreters. Consider this Python PySide/PyQt UI script: import sys from PySide import QtCore, QtGui from maya import cmds, mel class FormExample(QtGui.QWidget): def __init__(self): super(FormExample, self).__init__() btn = QtGui.QPushButton('My... Read more →

Autodesk DevDays 2013

DevDays is a great way to get a sense of what technology is coming from Autodesk, something that’s valuable even for Autodesk employees: the ADN team does a great job of synthesising what’s coming from our various product groups – a challenging task for lots of reasons (the timing of the event relative to development schedules, the volume of information to summarise and present within a limited amount of time, the difficulty of creating demo apps on pre-Alpha software, etc...).... Read more →

Got it right in MEL

evalDeferred() never worked with unquoted commands. Recently, someone reported that Maya 2014 works differently than previous releases when using evalDeferred(). the issue came-up with the following code: evalDeferred(print("test")) When MEL sees a function call being passed as a parameter to another function, it calls that function first and then passes the result down to the calling function. That is a general rule, and applies everywhere in MEL like in other languages. So MEL is not different here. In the example... Read more →

Maya Node Editor and Attributes

The Node Editor takes a number of features that were previously divided between Maya's Hypershade, the Hypergraph and the Connection Editor, and merges them into a single user-friendly workspace. The Node Editor gives us a much simpler way of making advanced connections between any nodes or attributes in your Maya scene. With the Node Editor you can graph, pin and clear nodes from the Node Editor... create nodes directly within the Node Editor, create / connect node attributes... But while... Read more →

Distributing Maya Apps - Porthaton is around the corner

Following this announcement. Here is an post from a colleague of mine Vjaya Prakash who is based in India (Bangalore) and mainly support the Maya API. People who wants to distribute their Apps which is going to be used by Maya users, they have to follow some semantics. You can watch the video of how to install sample apps and how to use those apps inside Maya here. If you are still thinking about where to start please see here.... Read more →

ADN Maya API training material freely available

Back from vacation, ..., and a tons of emails to process :( But I can see a light that is coming to an end. If you tried to contact me and not yet received an answer, please ping me again. Anyway I am pleased to announce that after many years we decided to publish our API training material as we will continue to maintain it in future. The video recordings are already published here: for Maya, for 3ds Max, for... 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 →

Taking a break

I’m up in the USA enjoying 3 weeks of hiking in the National Parks, and unfortunaly will not have any computer with me to play with programing. I'll start at Yellowstone for a week, and will then go south through Zion, Bryce, Arches, Grand Canyon, and few others... The last time, I went to Zion and Bryce it was at my honeymoon trip 20 years ago. I should be back in August and post here again. This one is real... 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 →

New Maya C++/C#/Python plug-in Wizards

This topic was suggested by one of our ADN members who had problems to setup his Mac OSX environment for building a Maya plug-in on the Mac. I quickly replied by a post here to mention what compiler / environment to use on the Mac since the Maya 2014 documentation is wrong (it actually still reference the Maya 2013 compiler / environment whereas it changed for Maya 2014). More important, you should better not upgrade to Mountain Lion if you... 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 →

MotionBuilder Custom Property .Selected not exposed to Python

When using Python in MotionBuilder, you can select object in the scene using the Python .Selected property. When setting that property to True, you would put the object into the selection list. However, Custom Properties do not have their .Selected Python property exposed which makes in theory impossible to select them programmatically. Hopefully there is a workaround :) The workaround is to use the .SetFocus() method. When using that method with the parameter set to True, you will put the... Read more →