Installing the Maya Developer Toolkit on a MacOS Environment

The Maya Developer Toolkit, also referred to as the Maya devkit, is used to create custom plug-ins, scripts, and applications that extend Maya's capabilities.

Important: Maya sets the SSL_CERT_FILE environment variable to point to the cert.pem file within its embedded Python Framework if SSL_CERT_FILE is unset.

If you need SSL_CERT_FILE to remain unset because you are using other means of controlling Python's certificate usage, set MAYA_DO_NOT_SET_SSL_CERT_FILE before launching Maya:

  export MAYA_DO_NOT_SET_SSL_CERT_FILE=1

Requirements

Xcode version 7.3.1 and CMake are required.

CMake is available to download from https://cmake.org/download/.

Download and Set Up the Developer Toolkit

The Maya devkit is available from The Maya Developer Center.

Scroll to the bottom of the Maya Developer Center page to find the devkit packages. Click on the appropriate link to download the devkit.

  1. Unarchive the devkit dmg package. This will create a mounted disk image name devkitBase.

  2. Create a devkitBase directory on your machine. It can be located anywhere except within the Maya insallation directory.

  3. Copy the contents of the devkitBase disk image to your devkitbase directory.

  4. Create a directory named plug-ins under your devkitBase directory. This is where you will store your own plug-ins and scripts.

  5. Create the plug-ins, scripts, and icons directories under your devkitBase/plug-ins/ directory.

  6. Edit the $HOME/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2019/Maya.env file to define path variables pointing to your plug-ins, scripts, and icons directories:

    MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH=$HOME/devkitBase/plug-ins/plug-ins/
    MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH=$HOME/devkitBase/plug-ins/scripts/
    XBMLANGPATH=$HOME/devkitBase/plug-ins/icons/
    

    Maya will use these paths to automatically discover the plug-ins and scripts in these directories. If these paths are not set, you will need to open Maya's Plug-ins Manager and manually browse to the location of the plug-ins and scripts to load them.

    Note: The $HOME/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2019/ directory is created when Maya is launched for the first time. It may also not be visible from Finder. If you do not see this directory in the Finder after launching Maya, navigate to it from a terminal window.

  7. Set the MAYA_LOCATION, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH, and DEVKIT_LOCATION environment variables.

    Important: Do not add a terminating slash to the end of your path variables.

    Open a terminal window and enter the following commands:

    > export MAYA_LOCATION=/Applications/Autodesk/maya2019/Maya.app/Contents
    > export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MAYA_LOCATION/MacOS
    > export DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH=$MAYA_LOCATION/Frameworks
    

    DEVKIT_LOCATION must point to the location of your devkitBase directory.

    For example, if you created /Users/<your_username>/devkitBase directory, open a terminal, and type in the following command:

    > export DEVKIT_LOCATION=/Users/<your_username>/devkitBase
    

    Note: Before compiling any plug-ins or applications, or running any applications, use the echo command to verify that these environment variables are set in the window where the plug-in or application will be built or run.

      echo $DEVKIT_LOCATION
    

    If echo does not return the expected path, reset the environment variable.

  8. Add cmake to your PATH variable. This will allow you to call cmake from the terminal window.

    > export PATH="Applications/CMake.app/Contents/bin":$PATH
    

    Note: Before compiling any plug-ins or applications in a terminal window, verify that you can call cmake from the command line using which:

      > which cmake
    

    If this command does not return the path to cmake, set your PATH variable again.