Ok, good to know that, but for now I’m compiling my project using 3ds max 2014 plugin wizard, which automatically sets all paths, libs, dependencies etc. How to setup my visual studio now to compile such project using max different sdk? Which options in the project properties should I change?

(make sure you have a full backup of your whole project before you start messing with this)
It’s a lot of work, but typically what you do is to create and set it up this way:

On top of your screen in VS there is ‘release’ and ‘debug’ in the dropdown,
click there and select ‘Configuration manager’.

In the manager you create a new configuration (let’s say you name it max2010).
Then go back to your VS gui, select the new configuration from the drop down.
Then you right-click your project in the solution explorer, and add new paths there to the other SDK, add paths to the libs, includes and so on to max 2010 SDK.)

This way you can have different configurations for different SDK versions etc.

But keep in mind that the SDK’s have different (and often older) visualstudio versions as recommended versions…

This can be solved by having older versions of visual studio installed, and then set it to use that older compiler from the newer visual studio version you are working in.

All of this is a bit demanding and troublesome to set up, but that’s basically what you need to do.

On my own projects I only support the latest version of max, with the latest SDK, I do never care about older versions, but I can see why it’s needed at times.

Good luck!

Thanks a lot. I think I’ve finally managed to compile it correctly I’ve read that there was some Unicode change since max 2013, I’m wondering if I will be able to correctly build the plugin for max 2012 and older (oryginally writen with max sdk 2014, so far I compiled it to 2013, 2014 and 2015).

The unicode stuff is mostly relevant when dealing with strings and such.
you can fix that by using some defines, for example this function, that let’s you get string and make it return it ‘properly’ based on what version of max you are compiling for.
You can do tricks that this to handle the unicode stuff.

#if MAX_VERSION_MAJOR < 15

const std::string & getstring(const char* str)
{
	return str;
}
#else

std::string getstring(const wchar_t* wstr)
{
	std::wstring ws(wstr);
	std::string str(ws.begin(), ws.end());
	return str;
}
#endif

It might sound strange but now I need to compile one of my plugins written for max 2016+ for max 2012. And I met difficulties doing that. So I have several questions…

1

as i see max 2012 requires vs 2008 (only!), but i’m looking in max sdk samples and see *.vcxproj files instead of *.vcproj files which the VS 2008 works with.
the question – How does it work? How can I to convert(?) project files to play with?

2

does anyone still work with max 2012 SDK? could you please send me any working vcproj file configured for x64? (i’m doing exactly the same setup for max 2014, 2016, 2017 and it works fine, but it doesn’t work for max 2012)

thanks,

We compile 2014-2017 with VS15 with no problems. *I don’t think we have any 2012 projects, I can check tomorrow when I get in office.