Setting up your build environment

This section describes how to build plug-ins to extend the functionality of Maya. It also explains how to run standalone API applications through the command line.

A plug-in is used to extend the functionality of Maya and utilizes dynamic loading of shared objects. Standalone API applications allow for creating applications that can be run on the command line. To build either a plug-in or standalone API application, certain environment variables must be set.

Standalone API applications have an additional requirement for running. These types of applications must know where Maya is installed along with the location of Maya’s libraries. The environment variable MAYA_LOCATION along with the platform specific library path environment variable is used for this. More details on these environment variables will be provided in the sections that follow.

Topics in this section

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.