Setting up the Maya devkit on Windows

The Maya devkit is available from The Maya Developer Center.

Scroll to the bottom of the Maya Developer Center page to find the devkit packages. Click on the appropriate link to download the devkit.

1. Unzip the devkit zip package to your C:\Users\<Username>\ directory, creating the C:\Users\<Username>\devkitBase\ directory.

2. Create the C:\Users\<Username>\devkitBase\plug-ins directory. This will be where you will keep the plug-ins and scripts you create.

3. Create the plug-ins, scripts, and icons directories under C:\Users\<Username>\devkitBase\plug-ins .

4. Modify the C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\maya\<version_number>\Maya.env file to create three path variables that point to your plug-ins and scripts. Use the Maya.env file that corresponds to the version of Maya you are developing for.

    MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH=C:\Users\<Username>\devkitBase\plug-ins\plug-ins
    MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH=C:\Users\<Username>\devkitBase\plug-ins\scripts
    XBMLANGPATH=C:\Users\<Username>\devkitBase\plug-ins\icons
   

   Note:

   The C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\maya\<version_number>\ directory is created when Maya is launched for the first time. Launch Maya if you do not see this directory.

   Maya will use these paths to automatically discover the plug-ins and scripts in these directories. If these paths are not set, you will need to open Maya's Plug-ins Manager and manually browse to the location of the plug-ins and scripts to load them.

5. Add the DEVKIT_LOCATION and MAYA_LOCATION environment variables, and modify your PATH variable to include the Maya bin directory.

   Important:

   If you have more than one version of Maya installed, only set these variables in the command window where you will be building your plug-ins and applications. Setting them in your user environment variables can result in a conflict with other versions of Maya that are installed on your system.

   DEVKIT_LOCATION must point to your Maya devkit installation directory.

   MAYA_LOCATION must point to the location where the version of Maya you are developing for is installed.

   Maya is installed to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\<maya_version> by default.

    set DEVKIT_LOCATION=C:\Users\<Username>\devkitBase\
    set MAYA_LOCATION="C:\Program Files\Autodesk\<maya_version>"
    set PATH=%PATH%;%MAYA_LOCATION%\bin
   

   Important:

   If DEVKIT_LOCATION points to a path with a space in its name, you will need to put quotes around variable and its value. For example:

   set "DEVKIT_LOCATION=C:\My Devkit Is Here"

   If you do not put quotes around the entire assignment, the CMake command that is used to build plug-in and application samples will fail.