What's New in API in Autodesk Maya 2016 Extension 2

For more information regarding the following features, see the What's New section of the Maya Developer Help.

API compatibility

Maya 2016 Extension 2 is not binary compatible with Maya 2016. To obtain the Maya 2016 and Maya 2016 Extension 1 API Guide, see http://www.autodesk.com/me-sdk-docs.

C++ plug-ins that were compiled against Maya 2016 or Maya 2016 Extension 1, including Maya 2016 service pack releases, must be re-compiled against Maya 2016 Extension 2 in order to be recognized by this version of Maya.

In addition, plug-ins compiled against Maya 2016 Extension 2 will either not load or exhibit unpredictable behavior if loaded in Maya 2016, Maya 2016 Extension 1, or any Maya 2016 service pack release.

Location of C++ API header files and libraries

The C++ API header files and libraries are now available with the Maya installation. It is no longer necessary to download the Maya Developer Kit in order to compile your custom plug-ins. The header and library files can be found in the following folders of your Maya installation:

Windows and Linux:

• Header files: ../include/maya
• Libraries: ../lib

Mac OS X:

• Header files: ../include/maya
• Libraries: ../Maya.app/Contents/MacOS

Viewport

The following are new features in the viewport area of the API, along with highlights of some of the new interfaces available:

• Shader debugging is now more robust
  • When acquiring a shader via MShaderManager::getEffectsFileShader() or MShaderManager::getEffectsBufferShader(), errors are printed to the Output Window to facilitate the debugging process for shader writers.
• Geometry remapping and consolidation
  • MPxShaderOverride::requiresUnsharedGeometricStreams() has been added that allows vertices to be expanded instead of shared. Semantics have been added that allow shader overrides to request face ids, vertex ids, and local UV coordinates. These allow plug-ins to remap vertex data provided at render time back to the original geometry.

  • You can now extract Maya object information from consolidated geometry using MRenderItem::sourceIndexMapping().

• Improved texture loading workflow, including texture background loading
  • The MRenderItem::setShaderFromNode() and MShaderManager::getShaderFromNode() interfaces have a new boolean argument nonTextured added that allows users to use a non-textured effect instance; for example, when the viewport is in shaded mode.
  • Overloaded MTextureManager::acquireTexture() method has been added that provides a simpler interface to load a file texture from a given texture node.
• Improved robustness of MPxSubSceneOverride, including shader node access and consolidation
  • New MRenderItem::setWantSubSceneConsolidation() and MRenderItem::wantSubSceneConsolidation() methods are now available on MRenderItem so that MPxSubSceneOverride can leverage Maya's geometry consolidation system.
• Improved robustness of plug-in rendering, including state and effects access for draw overrides and render overrides
  • A draw override can now contribute to post-effect passes by overriding the MPxDrawOverride::excludedFromPostEffects() method. Semantics of post effects passes such as the depth of field pass, normal depth pass, motion vector pass and so forth have been added.
• Improved diagnostics via tracing and profiling

  • The Profiler now graphs rendering events that execute within Viewport 2.0; for example: node evaluation and UI drawables list/render list building, as well as draw events such as UV Editor drawing, beauty pass render, and UI drawables rendering (such as manipulator drawing). Search for the prefix Vp2 in the Profiler to help identify render events or passes that may be performance bottlenecks in your scene. You may also find it useful to enable tracing via the ogs command.

  • Debug tracing information has been added for several override classes to help track evaluation order, as well as to the internal pipeline to track renderable list execution.
  • You can also enable tracing on MPxDrawOverride::traceCallSequence() and MPxDrawOverride::handleTraceMessage(), or use the ogs command with the -traceRenderPipeline flag to better understand the sequence of calls that are made for object overrides.
• Enhancements to interactive tool and drawing, including performance improvements (MFrameContext, MUIDrawManager)
  • MFrameContext includes additional interfaces that enable you to get the environment parameters for the current viewport, or to query information such as the background color or render override name, as well as additional display styles and object exclusion types.
• Completion of native Viewport 2.0 selection

Animation

The new MOpenCLBuffer convenience class has been added that makes it easy to allocate, update, and release OpenCL buffers. New interfaces have also been added to MGPUDeformerRegistrationInfo and MPxGPUDeformer to improve the workflow when creating GPU deformer override evaluators. Furthermore, additional interfaces have been added to enable MultiDraw consolidation support for MPxShaderOverride so that MPxShaderOverride plug-ins based on MShaderInstances can benefit from acceleration provided by MultiDraw consolidation.

Modeling

The MFnBlendShapeDeformer class has been updated with new interfaces and enumerations that allow you to add a new blend shape target with a specified target type, as well as to add a new blend shape target without a specified target object.

In addition, a new MCurveAttribute class was introduced in Maya 2016 Extension 1 for creating and manipulating curve attributes.

General

A new MRandom class has been added that provides interfaces to generate sequences of random numbers. This algorithm is fast, allows for parallelization and passes statistical tests on randomness.