About the devkit examples

Important: The devkit examples can change between releases. This includes their node IDs. Node IDs are used to uniquely identify nodes and plug-ins. If you will be using examples in production, or basing your own plug-ins on the example plug-ins, please obtain a unique node ID from https://mayaid.autodesk.io.

There are four types of examples included in the Maya devkit. All examples can be found under the devkit directory in devkitBase.

  1. C++ plug-ins. These compiled plug-ins are located in the plug-ins directory.

  2. Python scripted plug-ins. These scripts are located in the scripted directory under plug-ins. examples beginning in "py" use Maya Python API 2.0. All other examples use Maya Python API 1.0.

  3. C# plug-ins. These compiled plug-ins are located in the dotnet folder.

  4. Standalone applications. These applications make API calls to access Maya in batch mode. Examples are located in the applications directory. An example standalone Python script is available under the scripted subdirectory.

Important: Some examples require third-party libraries to compile or run. Most notably, any plug-in example that begins with abc cannot be built without additional libraries not included with Maya. Do not attempt to build these examples.

Example Naming Conventions

Examples are built into plug-ins that create specific items. An example's suffix indicates the item its plug-in creates.

Suffix Element created
Cmd command
Tool interactive tool
Node dependency node
Translator file translator
Shader shading node
Manip manipulator
Field dynamic field
Emitter dynamic emitters
Spring dynamic spring
Shape shape
Shader shader node