I’m looking into developing tools in the SDK. I would also like to use .NET (C#) for the user interface part, because it’s so much more flexible and easy to develop for than MFC.
I know that the SceneExplorer plugin does this, so it must be possible. I need some starting points though, get a basic setup to start from. I could not find much in the SDK documentation on the subject (surprise).
So the question is: does anyone have experience with combining .NET with the SDK? And could you give me some pointers on where to begin?
ps. I know about Max.NET, but I’d like to see if there’s some more direct approaches.
Download the latest SDK documentation and see the topics in “Writing .NET Plug-ins”.
There is a sample showing how to mix .NET with the SDK, it’s an extension for the Scene Explorer:
“The 3ds Max SDK installation includes a sample how-to plug-in demonstrating some of the fundamental issues involved in creating a .NET plug-in for 3ds Max. The plug-in project file and code is in howto\SceneExplorerExtension under your 3ds Max SDK installation folder.”
I did look at that in the 2010 documentation, but I couldn’t make too much out of it…
It’s not entirely clear what is going on exactly, and what requirements there are on the .NET side. I’ve been using .NET Reflector to take a look inside SceneExplorer.dll, but that’s (understandably) an enormous assembly. So it’s hard to find specifics in there.
What would be really helpful is a minimal plugin, something like popping up a “hello world” .NET MessageBox.
In fact, the most interesting and useful DLLs are CSharpUtilities.dll, ManagedServices.dll and MaxCustomControls.dll.
I have a small plug-in on my website showing how to display a .NET MaxForm. A MaxForm is a custom .NET form to be used in 3ds Max. It is defined in MaxCustomControls.dll. You can get the plug-in here.
Thanks! I’ll take a look at it.