[Closed] c++ sdk tutorials?

Hi Gibbz,

In fact there’s only a few resources about 3ds Max SDK programming availables. You can find some articles on Gamasutra and the only book covering Max SDK is outdated now.

Look at the Max SDK help, there’s some basics articles inside. And in fact, the samples provided with Max SDK are parts of the software. So, they are advanced and very often not easy to understand.

there are some tutorials around but they are all really outdated and they don’t cover much expect from the beggining of the process especially if you are developing for MAX 9. If you have a proper knowledge of c++ and max architecture then it would be only a matter of time and hard work to do what you want just by studying the plugins code provided with MAX SDK. The problem with most people that are not able to use the MAX SDK effectively is because they don’t understand how to program in C++. There is also a wizzard that comes with MAX SDK that intergrates with VC++ and creates the skeleton / base of the type of plugin you want to develop.

Yeah I would love to learn this stuff , I know 0.1 % of C and less on programing it for max. still would it be a case of starting with something simple and picking it up as I go along , or would you think that would still be to much ?. and where would the best place be to start ?

0.1 % of C

Do you know “volatile” keyword ?

What are your understanding level of C language ? Do you know program flow statements (if, else etc.), loop (while, for), functions, macros etc. ?

In fact, there’s no simple tutorials availables (as I far as I know). Max SDK is a mix of C/C++ code : user interface is in win32 C code, plugin classes in C++ etc. The eaysiest plugins to develop are the Utilities plugins.

Maybe one day an up-to-date book will be published…

ok thanks for the reply I stil may have a look anyway

I too was dissapointed by the lack of tutorials and help for max sdk. The widget tutorial probably helped me the most, although its really simple it gives you the basic idea what you have to do when creating a plugin to max. I’ve never really written anything with C++ before but I’m familiar with Java and I’ve read a book of C++ in the past so it wasn’t too hard to get along. However if you have no experience of object-oriented programming you might be in trouble.

Here is my plugin I wrote based on what I learned from widget tutorial:

http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jylilamm/Resources/SierpinskiPyramid.dlo

However I still haven’t figured out how to correctly make it animatable, if I animate the size it still doesn’t update correctly on viewport when playing the animation. This is also a good example on how the sdk help really explains very little of how these things are done.

Good luck with the sdk, you are gonna need it.

ok i found the widget tut, that was pretyt good for a simple overview…

Its a pitty that we cant use c# to complie plugins, it would be a fair bit simpler

Do you of course understand that creating good functional plugins will require you to write at least 10x the code you would in maxscript. Max 9 has support for .Net
that means you will not be able to compile plugins with c# but you could use c# inside your maxscripts doing things faster/better…
The only reason for writing plugins would be for tackling very specific reasons not possible with maxscript or c#, which expect the really good understanding of c++ will also require a thought out knowledge of max architecture / sdk. even companies that create plugins for max tend to code ui and most not memory/cpu intensive part in maxscript and only parts that can’t be done in maxscript coded in c++
the best way to create a plugin in my opinion is :
you write the skeleton and the ui maxscript, you write some functions with the ability to be called from maxscript in c++ and compile them in a plugin

which is the widget tut you are referring to ?

i don’t think autodesk will ever give you the ability to compile plugins in c#, although i hope someday ( maybe in version 15 ) they will give us the ability to create our own modifier classes, lights, procedural textures etc etc. with maxscript or c#
( or even better integrate python in max and give it a big push in the animation/film industry )

Hi,

I think it will NEVER be possible to write Max plugins in C# because its architecture is too old. They’ve just added dotNet bridge to MAXScript because ActiveX controls are not supported on x64 platforms. .NET can be used in plugins using C++/CLI (very tricky).
Maybe, in my opinion, Autodesk will release a new 3D DCC Software in the next 5 years.
Will it be possible to write plugins in C# ? I’m not sure. Wait and see…