Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn’t search the SDK setcion for some reason.

I want to try my hand at plugin development, (have for some time), unfortunately, i can’t find many (or any) tuts on creating exporter plugins with maxscript. the only ones i can find are for writing to text files.

Unfortunately, the 3ds Max 8 SDK requires Visual Studio 7.0/7.1, which is version 2003, and that’s been unavailable for years, Microsoft even discontinued download availability of the Visual Studio 2005 express editions about a week ago, so i’ve got no chance of getting my hands on a copy of VS 2003.

I’ve tried converting the sample .vcproj files in the Max 8 SDK to work with VS 2008, but that was a no-go. They wouldn’t even convert with Visual Studio 2005 Express when i tried it.

So my question is this:

Is it possible to recreate the Max 8 appwizard/project template to be compatible with Visual Studio 2008? I believe someone managed to do it before, and placed a link to it in the official Autodesk forums, but when i tried to click on it, the link was dead.

My 3D work: here and here.

3ds Max 8 SP3 Educational Version (got it while in college)
----
Win 7 Pro X64
Q6600 Intel 2.4GHz Quad Core CPU
8 GB DDR2 RAM
Samsung 400GB SATA2 Hard Drive
Asus Std Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 3800 (I’m not sure how much memory this thing has now, dxdiag says it has 3GB, Sys info says 512MB....wierd)

I have not tried this with Express, I use Professional.

I simply started a new wizard project and observed the differences. In the end, the
“3dsmaxPluginWizard.vsz”, “3dsmaxPluginWizard.vcproj” and “\\Templates\\1033\\root.vcproj” files did not match the VS2008 versions.

I only wanted the wizard to start an exporter project. If you are making something else, please post and say how it worked out.

I’ve not actually tried to create anything yet, (I’m about to try creating a new 3ds project wizard though), last time i tried this, i just tried updating the sample .vcproj files, but visual studio 2005 Express (when i tried it) and visual studio 2008 Express wouldn’t have it.

How exactly did you create the project wizard? Did the plugin work?

My 3D work: here and here.

3ds Max 8 SP3 Educational Version (got it while in college)
----
Win 7 Pro X64
Q6600 Intel 2.4GHz Quad Core CPU
8 GB DDR2 RAM
Samsung 400GB SATA2 Hard Drive
Asus Std Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 3800 (I’m not sure how much memory this thing has now, dxdiag says it has 3GB, Sys info says 512MB....wierd)

In the New Projects dialog, select “Visual C++” in the tree then, “Custom Wizard” which is how the plugin wizard we’re discussing was created.

I am having trouble attaching a file to a post, maybe my IE8 is wound too tightly or maybe that feature is not enabled yet but, here’s a link to a copy of the one I use:

http://www.tdmpalace.com/teamtools/3dsmaxPluginWizard2008.rar

Post if you receive joy. If so, I’ll leave it up for a few months.

Thank you. :) Downloading now.

I don’t think VC++ Express has a custom wizard template like the one you mentioned. I’ll try and post a screen shot of my new project window.

EDIT

ok, I’ve extracted all the files in that .rar and put then in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcprojects.

There are 3 other folders: vcNET, General, and Win32, the readme wasn’t very clear on install instructions, doesn’t help much since the folder directories have obviously changed over the VS versions.

The 3ds max folder you see in that screenhot is from my previous attempt to install the Max8 SDK project wizard.

EDIT 2

Ok, I’ve just looked through the online help, and apparently, the Custom Wizard template is not available in the Express edition, and from the looks of it, neither are all the MFC templates.

The maxpluginwizard.vcproj file actually DOES open in VC++ 2008 Express when i double click on it, it just won’t show up in the templates list. ( probably haven’t put it in the right folder yet.)

EDIT 3

Hmm, just looking through some other folders, I think i’ve found where i need to install everything, i’ll edit again if i have any success.

My 3D work: here and here.

3ds Max 8 SP3 Educational Version (got it while in college)
----
Win 7 Pro X64
Q6600 Intel 2.4GHz Quad Core CPU
8 GB DDR2 RAM
Samsung 400GB SATA2 Hard Drive
Asus Std Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 3800 (I’m not sure how much memory this thing has now, dxdiag says it has 3GB, Sys info says 512MB....wierd)

	Attachment

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3dsmax8PluginWizard2008.rar

Looks like the file set I gave you was a little too vanilla, I edited the vsz and readme. Re-DL and try the readme steps again.

I’m acquiring Express to see if this will even work. It’ll take a bit, I’m nLite-ing up some Vista with SP2, I want to try it on a cleaner machine than my workstation.

ok, I’m just re-arranging the files now.

EDIT

By the way, as well as the vcprojects folder in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\ there’s also a folder called Express, with a vcprojects folder in that.

See attached:

EDIT 2

Well, i got the template to show up in the New Project window (see second attachment), but I think i need to do a little bit more file re-arranging, i think the maxprojectwizard.vcproj might be in the wrong place, because at the memoment, nothing happens when i click on the OK button in the New Project window.

My 3D work: here and here.

3ds Max 8 SP3 Educational Version (got it while in college)
----
Win 7 Pro X64
Q6600 Intel 2.4GHz Quad Core CPU
8 GB DDR2 RAM
Samsung 400GB SATA2 Hard Drive
Asus Std Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 3800 (I’m not sure how much memory this thing has now, dxdiag says it has 3GB, Sys info says 512MB....wierd)

	Attachment

	Attachment

DL/extract a fresh copy: 3dsmaxPluginWizard2008.rar

Edit the absolute path to point to the extraction folder, no trailing “/”.

Copy the ico, vsdir and edited vsz files to the “VC\Express\VCProjects” folder.

Start a new project.

Config your plugin.

Get to codin’!

Excellent! :D It worked! You are now my friend for life. :P

I just tried to build/compile the project (after changing a couple of things in the Linker section of the properties, namely, the output path, changed it to max8 from max 2008), and when i built it, i got a message saying the project was out of date. Did you have that issue?

I got the following two errors:

>maxProject1.cpp
1>c:\documents and settings\anthony adams\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\maxproject1\maxproject1\maxproject1.cpp(178) : fatal error C1010: unexpected end of file while looking for precompiled header. Did you forget to add ‘#include “stdafx.h”’ to your source?
1>DllEntry.cpp
1>c:\documents and settings\anthony adams\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\maxproject1\maxproject1\dllentry.cpp(79) : fatal error C1010: unexpected end of file while looking for precompiled header. Did you forget to add ‘#include “stdafx.h”’ to your source?

Ok, I think I solved the missing stdafx.h file (I just created one in the header folder), now it’s saying it can’t find maxProject1.pch, which are pre-compiled headers i believe.

My 3D work: here and here.

3ds Max 8 SP3 Educational Version (got it while in college)
----
Win 7 Pro X64
Q6600 Intel 2.4GHz Quad Core CPU
8 GB DDR2 RAM
Samsung 400GB SATA2 Hard Drive
Asus Std Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 3800 (I’m not sure how much memory this thing has now, dxdiag says it has 3GB, Sys info says 512MB....wierd)

I did not but, I sometimes get it when moving a project from one machine to another without cleaning.

In older versions of VS, I have sometime had to manually clean the project to get it to stop.
In VS2008, I’ve seen other quirkiness, like having to manually delete the ncb (Intelli-sense) file now-and-again or fairly large projects. The frequency has gone down since SP1 but it still happens.

What I did get were some compile errors related to the wizard being geared toward an IDE with MFC. As far as PCH’s go, you can toss that setting in project-properties-C++-Precompiled Headers, it’s related to MFC which you don’t have.

What kinda plugin ya’ makin’?

Well, I tried to make an exporter, though i might go through the SDK documentation and try to do some of the plugin tuts in that (there’s one for creating a new object.)

And, I’ll experiment with the original maxprojectwizard from the SDK, see if it’ll work with that.

Since C++ Express doesn’t update projects automatically (a feature it really needs), how do i make sure i don’t get that “The Project/solution is out of date.” message, and build failing as a result?

My 3D work: here and here.

3ds Max 8 SP3 Educational Version (got it while in college)
----
Win 7 Pro X64
Q6600 Intel 2.4GHz Quad Core CPU
8 GB DDR2 RAM
Samsung 400GB SATA2 Hard Drive
Asus Std Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 3800 (I’m not sure how much memory this thing has now, dxdiag says it has 3GB, Sys info says 512MB....wierd)