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.
Your Visual Studio installation must include the "Visual C++ ATL for x86 and x64" component and the "Visual C++ MFC for x86 and x64" component. You can verify that these components are installed by launching the Visual Studio Installer and selecting More > Modify, which will show you the details of your installation.
Additionally, if you plan to use the wizard to create plugins with Qt-based UIs, you will need to have Qt and the Qt Visual Studio Tools installed, and you will need to define a default Qt version in Visual Studio by navigating to Qt VS Tools > Qt Options.
For more information about the specific versions of Visual Studio and Qt required, see SDK Requirements .
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]"Also make sure the "Wizard" variable has the correct value based on the version of Visual Studio you are using:
For Visual Studio 2015 use: Wizard=VsWizard.VsWizardEngine.14.0
For Visual Studio 2017 use: Wizard=VsWizard.VsWizardEngine.15.0Once you have completed the previous steps, 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.
Finally, copy the following files from the 3dsmaxPluginWizard root to the 'VC\vcprojects' directory under your Visual Studio installation directory (e.g. for Visual Studio 2015 copy them to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2015\VC\vcprojects and for Visual Studio 2017 copy them to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\Common7\IDE\VC\vcprojects):
The 3ds Max Plug-in Wizard project should appear when you restart Visual Studio and select File > New > Project > Visual C++ from the menu.