Legal
This note only applies to this page, and isn’t applicable to any other page links are provided to, or linking to this page.
All content and software offered as links on this page is the Intellectual Property of the respective owners as indicated on each destination website linked to.
The Cult of Rig website and the person of Raffaele Frgapane are not affiliated with any of the providers nor responsible for the contents provided by other parties.
Links are provided as is, and only meant to be pointing readers to worthwhile resources that were actual at the time of writing. No guarantee of their persistence or of your right to access the contents of such links is given.
Autodesk and Maya are registered trademarks of Autodesk Inc. Microsoft and Visual Studio are registered trademarks of Microsoft.
Programming / Development – 3rd Party Downloads
The official documentation for Autodesk Maya
SDK documentation is accessed frequently even by experienced developers already familiar with the platform.
I suggest you download (and keep around) the offline documentation and keep it around for each version of Maya you intend to support.
A few versions ago Autodesk started releasing documentation under CC's Share Alike 3.0 licensing, which is excellent and makes it safe to use in many different legal conditions.
Devkit – 2017
The name dev-kit might be confusing (you don’t need it to build plugins), but if you want the examples’ source code often mentioned in the documentation, and the modded Qt source, those can now be found on the Autodesk app store for some versions, and in a public repository for older versions.
The necessary headers and libraries come with the installation of Maya, and if you want to build for older versions/upgrade to a new version, hold onto a back up of those for dear life before you remove old installations.
Pre 2016 you could still find the devkit examples in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\devkit Or whatever other installation directory you set it to. From Maya 2016 and on you will instead find a file called README_DEVKIT_MOVED.txt that tells you to go to some other destination. What is available on the Autodesk App Store might change over time, but insofar the last two version's devkits have been available through the store, while the rest has been moved to a public repository. Maya's headers and libs remain available with the install, and the devkit only re-offers the headers (possibly to support the modified Qt they also bundle).
Devkit – 2016 ext2
See notes above. At time of writing this 2016 extension 2 is still available from the app store.
Devkit – 2016
The 2016 version of the dev kit is available on Autodesk’s public Git repository
Node ID Blocks
To Register nodes with Maya you will need a unique node ID. While the IDs are just sequential integer numbers, to avoid clashes with other reigstered nodes, you will want them “guaranteed” to be unique, which is done by registering the request with Autodesk, and receiving your very own special batch of IDs.
To be honest this is probably an unnecessary remnant of days long gone when you needed to pay for the privilege to develop plugins for most 3D software, but nonetheless you have to deal with it still. Luckily these days the numbers are free, so just go to the link above and get yourself some IDs.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Community
The de facto standard C++ compiler/debugger for Windows. Bundled with a respected IDE and some other goodies; it’s entirely free these days.
Go to the link above, and get Visual Studio, the Community edition, and you’ll be good to go for a long time.