Mac OS X environment

Building with Makefiles

1. Define the MAYA_LOCATION environment variable to point to the directory where Maya is installed. If your command-line shell is sh, bash or ksh then the commands would be as follows:

   export MAYA_LOCATION=/Applications/Autodesk/maya2017/Maya.app/Contents
   

   If you don't want to have to reset MAYA_LOCATION each time you log in, then add those commands to your $HOME/.profile as well.

   If your command-line shell is csh or tcsh then command would be:

   setenv MAYA_LOCATION /Applications/Autodesk/maya2017/Maya.app/Contents
   

   and you can also add it to your $HOME/.cshrc to avoid having to reset it each time you log in.

2. Create a local working directory and copy the plug-in sources into it. This step is necessary because you likely won't have write permissions on the directories where Maya's Developer Kit is installed:

   mkdir -p $HOME/devkit/plug-ins
   cd $HOME/devkit/plug-ins
   cp -r /Applications/Autodesk/maya2017/devkit/plug-ins/* .
   

3. Set the DEVKIT_LOCATION environment variable to the folder at which you have unarchived your devkit package, that is, where the /include and /mkspecs directories are located.
4. Now you're ready to build the plug-ins:

   make clean
   make
   

5. You can now install and load your plug-ins. In your local plug-in directory, create 3 folders: plug-ins, scripts, icons.

   mkdir plug-ins scripts icons

6. Copy plug-in files into the plug-ins directory, scripts file into the scripts directory, icon files into the icons directory.

   cp */*.bundle plug-ins
   cp */*.{mel,py} scripts
   cp */*.{png,xpm,cur,rgb} icons

7. Create a Maya.env file with three environment variables to specify to Maya where to search for plug-ins, scripts and icons. The three environment variables are:
   • MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH - directories to search for plug-ins
   • MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH - directories to search for MEL and Python scripts
   • XBMLANGPATH - directories to search for icons

   For more information about the Maya.env file, including the location to which it should be saved on each platform, see Setting environment variables using Maya.env. Using Maya.env makes it easy to set up the same runtime environment on another system by simply copying the file. You can still set explicit values for these variables on the command line and they are prepended to the values given in Maya.env.

   Set your Maya.env file to use the common directories:

   MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = $HOME/devkit/plug-ins/plug-ins
   MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = $HOME/devkit/plug-ins/scripts
   XBMLANGPATH = $HOME/devkit/plug-ins/icons/%B
   

   Now when you start up Maya and bring up the Plug-in Manager you'll see all of the Developer Kit plug-ins, listed within a common section.

MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = $HOME/devkit/plug-ins/circleNode:$HOME/devkit/plug-ins/whatisCmd
MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = $HOME/devkit/plug-ins/circleNode:$HOME/devkit/plug-ins/whatisCmd
XBMLANGPATH = $HOME/devkit/plug-ins/circleNode/%B:$HOME/devkit/plug-ins/whatisCmd/%B

Building with Xcode project files

To build one of the example plug-ins using Xcode, you must use the same version of Mac OS X that you'll be running Maya on and have the Xcode application installed. Then, do the following:

1. Browse to /Applications/Autodesk/maya2017/devkit/plug-ins.
2. Make a copy of the subdirectory containing the plug-in you wish to build. For example, if you wish to build the circleNode plug-in then make a copy of /Applications/Autodesk/maya2017/devkit/plug-ins/circleNode
3. Browse into the copy of the directory and double-click on the plug-in's Xcode project file, e.g. circleNode.xcodeproj
4. Select the Build option from the Build menu. The resulting plug-in will have an extension of .bundle and will be located in the build subdirectory, under the configuration you used for the build. For example, if your circleNode plug-in is located in $HOME/myCircleNode and then built using the Debug configuration, then the plug-in will be in $HOME/myCircleNode/build/Debug/circleNode.bundle.

In order for Maya to find the plug-in you must set a number of environment variables to point to the directories containing its files. See Installing a Maya plug-in for more information regarding installing the plug-in and setting environment variables in the Maya.env file. As an example, in this case, if you want to access the circleNode and whatisCmd Developer Kit plug-ins from within Maya, then your Maya.env file should contain the following:

MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = $HOME/myCircleNode/build/Debug
MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH = $HOME/myCircleNode
XBMLANGPATH = $HOME/myCircleNode/%B

Building API applications

For building API applications, we only provide a Makefile solution. To build the supplied stand-alone application examples, you need to do the following:

export MAYA_LOCATION=/Applications/Autodesk/maya2017/Maya.app/Contents
mkdir –p $HOME/devkit/applications    
cd $HOME/devkit/applications
cp –r /Applications/Autodesk/maya2017/devkit/applications/* .
make clean
make

The shell script mayald is used to link Maya API applications. It is important that the MAYA_LOCATION be set to the correct version of Maya before running the command, otherwise the application may fail to execute properly.

When linking your own plug-ins, make sure to provide the mayald command with a list all of the OpenMaya libraries containing the API classes you have used. The reference pages for each class specify the particular OpenMaya library containing the class.

Running API applications

On Mac OS X, you must set the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before you try to execute one of these applications so the runtime linker can find the Maya shared libraries.

The recommended procedure for preparing to build and run stand-alone applications is to set the following environment variables:

export MAYA_LOCATION=/Applications/Autodesk/maya2017/Maya.app/Contents
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MAYA_LOCATION/MacOS
export DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH=$MAYA_LOCATION/Frameworks

Related topics

• Installing a Maya plug-in
• Distributing Maya Plug-ins