A rambling rant about maya plugins and version upg

[lordabdul]

forgive me but i need to vent.
We recently upgraded from maya4.0 to maya 4.5.
I have been very happy with the improvements and fluid effects but one thing is starting to really tick me off about maya releases.
The plugins from older versions cannot be used in new versions!
I have been using maya since the beta of 1.0 and this is really starting to tick me off. I use the metaball plugin, the plasma plugin and tons of great other addons that have been released on highend over the years. I do not understand why new versions of maya do not accept older plugins... even when the jump is only up .5. this unnaceptable to me because i use some these plugins everyday and when a new release comes out we lose our old lic and are unable to use the odler plugins... ever tried creating a metaball effect wihtout the plugin? god bless Adam M! This is rediculous. i can understand not being able to run a new plugin on an older verison of maya, but what about a new verison? why cant they include support in in releases for older plugins? I know if a group of scientists can create something as remarkable as fluid effects and voxels can create a few simple pages of code to allow older plugins! I would suggest a simple dos prog that could convert old plugins to diferent versions of maya..
maybe im nuts and i just dont know anything about programming..
thanks for letting me rant!

[gmask]

From version to version certain aspcects of the API may change thus making any or all plugins non functional. they woul dnot want the user to think maya is buggy because it is crashing on a plugin that is not compiled for the correct version sot hat do nto allow old plugins to be laoded.

Techncially there may be some plugins that could keep working.. I really don't know. You may beable to hack a plugin to work with a newer version of the software as to my knowledge it is a simple flag somewhere just like in the headers of the Maya scene files.

I have a rather huge collection of 4.0 plugins as well and you can either keep the old version around for when you need those things and sometimes it is good to be forced to figure out how to do things a new way.

[deke-kincaid]

It works the same way with most 3d software, Maya, 3dsmax(except v5.0), Soft3d/XSI, houdini, etc...

Read these posts from Shai and Andrew Chapman for a more thorough explanation:
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/archive/sp.3d?mail\_id=55109
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/archive/sp.3d?mail\_id=55212

Quote:
"In the long run, keeping plugins backward-compatable is really not a
good thing.

If you start advertising that as a feature, then there grows a
reluctance on the part of the API developers to change anything that
will affect that compatability, and sooner or later the API is just a
big mess of additions and hacks, rather than staying flexible and
powerful.

Sure, it inconveniences the users to have to get and install new plugin
versions, but it ensures a better API in the longer term.

--
Andrew Chapman
3D Technical Director - Framestore CFC"

unQuote

[deke-kincaid]

One other thing, if your so dependant on those plugins for a project or day to day work then the answer is pretty simple: DONT UPGRADE! If your working on a long term production you really shouldn't upgrade in the middle of the project except for bug fixes. Either that or it's very early in production and you can afford to do so. I had some friends working on a production that they were still using maya 2.5 even after 3.0 and 4.0 came out.

[jeffd]

The thing that really sucks about this is that most of these plugins only need a recompile to make the version jump. But too often the owner of the source code is no longer around anymore for whatever reason.

I am not buying the "it is better to not be backward compatible" argument anymore. It is easier for development, but I don't see how it is better for users. What good is a plugin architecture if you can't really count on the tools you may purchase to help you.

3DSMAX got bit pretty bad with this in a previous upgrade when a couple of high profile developers went out of business. Now MAX5 and future releases will be backwards compatible for plugins. Demonstrating that it is doable. So maybe it isn't the "best" thing, but at least they are responding to the customer base.

Look at this way, what if we were told that it would be best if Maya were not backwards compatible with files - Maya 4.5 wouldn't load 4.0 files - because it would be better that way. I am sure that there are a lot of valid reasons that would be good for development, but, obviously, it would be unacceptable to users.

--JeffD

[deke-kincaid]

What we really should be pushing for is to get people on highend to post the source code on highend along with their compiled plugin. This way if someone doesnt have time to update them anymore, or if someone doesn't have access to some of the other operating systems, people would still be able to compile the plugin on their own and still use it. Also this will allow people experimenting with the api to have some real world examples of code for plugins

Also food for thought. If you read my link to Shai's post, it is mentioned that they did the most amount of api changes in 4.5 since maya 1.0 shipped. So most of the plugins would probably not work anyways, or they would be extremely buggy. Then who do you think will get blamed for this problem? The users will then be bitching and complaining about the author making this crappy plugin that just crashes maya all the time or they will blame a/w for crappy software or some other lame crap.

[gmask]

The users will then be bitching and complaining about the author making this crappy plugin that just crashes maya all the time or they will blame a/w for crappy software or some other lame crap.

Yes absolutely.. I suppose if AW wanted though they could grant an override that would warn you that what you are about to do is dangerous and may have unexpected results and let you load the old ones anyway. The comparison to Max says to me that they will not be updating MAX very much in the near future or at all as it has been rumored.

I have used other apps where that allow old plugins to work and it is not allways pretty. After Effects for example has done a pretty good job updating their API while maintaing compatibility with the most plugins possible but some simple do not work correctly in the new versions and have to be recompiled.

[joojaa]

One good reason for recompile is that while the code of the plug itself doesent change it might still gain performance by the fact that the api functions themselves have been more optimized.

Besides 4.5 is an api upgrade which certainly means that this is the time when you want to recompile if any.

[sumo-kun]

You still own your 4.0 license, you just need both versions in your aw.dat file. I run both versions until all of my plugin's have crossed over
-MD