Installing the Plug-in Wizard (AppWizard)

The 3ds Max Plug-in Wizard (commonly called the AppWizard) is an add-in for Visual Studio that builds skeleton plug-ins for 3ds Max. You simply have to specify what plug-in type you would like to build, and follow the directions in the wizard. The wizard generates the Visual Studio project files, the CPP files, and skeleton code with "TODO" comments.

Wizard Installation

Open the 3dsMaxPluginWizard.vsz file (in the maxsdk\Howto\3dsmaxPluginWizard directory root) in a text editor and edit the ABSOLUTE PATH parameter to reflect the new location of the 3dsmaxPluginWizard root directory. Do not add a backslash after the directory name. 

Param="ABSOLUTE_PATH = [Absolute Path Location of 3dsmaxPluginWizard Root Directory]"

If you are installing the wizard for Visual Studio 2015, ensure the "Wizard" variable is the right version: 

Wizard=VsWizard.VsWizardEngine.14.0

Select the maxsdk\Howto\3dsmaxPluginWizard directory's properties, and make all the files it contains writeable (clear the "Read Only" checkbox). This prevents Visual Studio from crashing after it creates a PluginWizard project.

Copy the following files from the 3dsmaxPluginWizard root to the 'VC\vcprojects' directory under your Visual Studio installation directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2015\VC\vcprojects for Visual Studio 2015):

The 3ds Max Plug-in Wizard project should appear when you restart Microsoft Visual Studio and select File > New:Projects > Visual C++ Projects from the menu.

Please send us your comment about this page

Creative Commons License Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see the Autodesk Creative Commons FAQ for more information.