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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 →

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 →

How to build PyQt5 for Maya 2022

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

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Accessing "unsubdivide" functionality from a Mudbox plug-in

Unfortunately, the rebuild subdivision levels functionality isn’t directly exposed through the SDK, but it is possible to call any menu item in Mudbox (including this one) via Qt. So what you will want to do is: // build a list of geometries you wish to operate on. QList aGeos ; // you populate this list. // get a pointer to the QMenu widget for the mesh menu QMenu *pQ =Kernel ()->Interface ()->DropDownMenu (Interface::ddmMesh) ; // Enumerate over the menu... Read more →

Building SIP, and PyQt for Maya 2014

This is an updated version for Maya 2014' PyQt build instructions. This is an updated version of the Maya 2013 build instructions for PyQt and PySide (here). The very good news is that with Maya 2014, there is no more need to build PySide as it is coming by default in Maya :) libxml, openSSL, OpenAL, python2.7, qt-4.8.2-64, and tbb are also coming by default in the Maya include and lib folder, so unless you have a very specific need,... Read more →

C++ Qt custom widget to Python

While it is rather easy to create a composite widget using Python and/or a true custom widget using Python (see examples in PyQt distribution /examples/designer/plugins/widgets), it becomes very unintuitive when you use C++ :( For this post we will be using a true custom Widget and go step by step on what you need to do to get it working and exposed in Maya. For this we will be using a clock (with seconds) The first thing is to create... Read more →

Building Qt, PyQt, PySide for Maya 2013 - Part 2

This is a continuation of the previous post and this time we will focus on building PySide. PySide [http://www.pyside.org/ or http://qt-project.org/wiki/PySide/] is a python binding to the Qt library. Because Maya uses Qt internally, you can use the PySide modules in Maya python scripts to create custom UI. PySide does not have the same licensing as Maya, Qt, or Python. Please consult the PySide website for information about licensing for PySide. Download Shiboken & PySide: http://qt-project.org/wiki/PySideDownloads Download Cmake: http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html Maya... Read more →

Building Qt, PyQt, PySide for Maya 2013 - Part 1

To complete the article written by Kristine last month, I could not resist to go through the process of building these libraries myself on the 3 platforms Windows x64, Linux and MacOS (I tend not to work on win32 anymore). Unfortunately, the documentation provided by Autodesk isn't always very clear. Not I mean it is wrong or incorrect, but sometimes assumes you either know these Qt underneath requirements and/or Autodesk internal build procedures. Building Qt Whatever you decide to do,... Read more →

Access the Qt event loop in Maya

Maya uses a customized version of Nokia's Open Source Qt 4.7.1 framework (for Maya 2013). If you want to use Qt in your Maya plug-ins then you will have to use the same modified version as Maya. Most of the Qt modified libs ship with the Maya distribution (located in $MAYA_LOCATION/lib). So in theory you would not need build the libraries yourself unless you need more. Then it will require that you build a local copy of Qt from the... Read more →

Adding a Custom Cursor in MCursor in Maya

To create a custom cursor when using MPxContext::SetCursor, a cursor requires two XBM images: one for the mask, which defines which bits are transparent and which opaque, and one for the color, which defines which bits are white and which are black. If you look at an XBM image file you'll see that it's just a snippet of C code which defines macros giving the width and height of the image, and an array of unsigned char. E.g: #define HtumbleCursorMask_width... Read more →

Mudbox compiler versions

Lots of talk about Maya recently, but to reflect my post on compiler versions for Maya, here is a list of the various OS and compiler you would need to build plug-ins on Mudbox. Note that Mudbox plug-ins are C++ only compared to Maya. But Mudbox uses CG and Qt a lot, so most of the time you would need to support those too. OpenGL is also an option. Visual Studio Express compiler is not officially supported, but less the... Read more →

All Things Qt

Okay, let me re-phrase that, “All Things Qt….and Maya” :) In the past couple of years I have been getting more and more interested and into Qt, why you ask? Because it’s fun to develop things that are visual! I am what you would call a “Visual Learner” if I can see it or picture it with my mind’s eye, and then I will understand it a lot quicker! And reason two; there are Python wrappers for Qt!!! (Need I... Read more →

Updated Maya API Documentation Online and New Python API Learning Path

We have updated the Maya 2013 API Documentation, so please download the latest version here: http://www.autodesk.com/me-sdk-docs Within the updated documentation there are two major additions which have been done by Martin Ashton are API documentations Guru: First, we have a brand new Maya Python Learning Path http://docs.autodesk.com/MAYAUL/2013/ENU/Maya-API-Documentation/files/GUID-856DDB26-93E7-493D-A1D4-60C4CBA38B9C.htm Second, a class taxonomy – all classes arranged according to subject/concept http://docs.autodesk.com/MAYAUL/2013/ENU/Maya-API-Documentation/cpp_ref/_maya.html Enjoy! Kristine Read more →

What’s New in the MotionBuilder 2013 SDK?

Programming Environment and Code Refactoring Changes MotionBuilder and its distributed plug-ins are now compiled using Visual Studio 2010 (Service Pack 1). FBContainer has been renamed to FBVisualContainer for uniformity of cross-product naming schemes. const correctness improvements. Although not enforced in this release, we recommend that the "H" prefix in classes such as HFBPlug be removed and replaced by the pointer suffix "*", for example: FBPlug*. This change is intended to facilitate the use of the documentation system in the near... Read more →