How Do I Access Maya Api From A Stand-alone Application

[michael-darkangel]

I think the topic says it all.

Is there a way to access the Maya API from within a stand-alone C++ application? If I include MLibrary or MGlobal, upon Building I receive numerous errors and warnings which stop the build.

Any help, as always, greatly appreciated,

MDA

[daniel-faust]

Are you trying to compile one of the provided examples in order to get you started? (Maya../devkit/applications/*)

It would be very useful if you post the errors you are getting.

[rob-bateman]

have you #defined NT_APP in the pre-processor settings ?

[michael-darkangel]

QUOTE(Rob Bateman @ 11/21/06, 05:26 AM) [snapback]252921[/snapback]
have you #defined NT_APP in the pre-processor settings ?

Receiving less errors now, however still receiving over 300 warnings. I can live with the warnings, however the errors stop the build.

MS redefinition: previous definition was namespace
ksuccess is not a member of MS

Those are the two errors I receive.

Thanks again,

MDA

[rob-bateman]

possibly because kSuccess has a capital S?

[michael-darkangel]

QUOTE(Rob Bateman @ 11/21/06, 07:49 AM) [snapback]252931[/snapback]
possibly because kSuccess has a capital S?

I apologize, I was rushed this morning and what I typed this morning was a typo. In fact, the error message does say:

error C2365: 'MS' : redefinition; previous definition was 'namespace' MStatus.h
error C2039: 'kSuccess' : is not a member of 'MS' MStatus.h

I also wanted to add that I am using Maya 7.0 and Visual Studio 2005 Pro.

In the pre-processor settings these are the definitions:

Configuration - Debug -- WIN32;_DEBUG;NT_APP
Configuration - Release -- WIN32;NDEBUG;NT_APP

And Daniel I wanted to answer your question also but ran out of time. No, I am not trying one of the examples (however I will look into those tonight for inspiration, perhaps), at the moment all this will do is open a Windows Form with a groupBox in the form layout. If I can't get past the errors in accessing MGlobal and MLibrary from a stand-alone app then there really is no point in me pursuing this avenue.

If that is the case, is it possible to make a plug-in that utilizes Visual C++ for the GUI. Making this entirely with MEL is not possible as it will be an importer that reads a binary file with a variety of variable sizes (int64, float, char, et al).

Thanks again,

MDA

[daniel-faust]

QUOTE
however I will look into those tonight for inspiration, perhaps

You got me wrong there, compiling the asciiToBinary solution successfully will tell you that Visual Studio is set up correctly to do an application compilation.

Also, you can look at the solutions property page to see if you're missing something in your properties.

[michael-darkangel]

QUOTE(Daniel_Faust @ 11/21/06, 10:07 PM) [snapback]253009[/snapback]
You got me wrong there, compiling the asciiToBinary solution successfully will tell you that Visual Studio is set up correctly to do an application compilation.

Also, you can look at the solutions property page to see if you're missing something in your properties.

Gonna test that right now.

[michael-darkangel]

Build succeeded with only 1 warning:

warning LNK4075: ignoring '/EDITANDCONTINUE' due to '/INCREMENTAL:NO' specification -- asciiToBinary.obj

As for the properties, there are a few differences.

The Preprocessor definitions are different. asciiToBinary has _CONSOLE and REQUIRE_IOSTREAM for both Debug and Release. Do I need these?

Under Linker the Additional Dependencies are different. asciiToBinary has odbc32.lib, odbccp.lib, Foundation.lib and OpenMaya.lib listed. Mine has $(No Inherit) listed. I can assume I should at the very least add Foundation and OpenMaya here, but do I need the odbc stuff?

[edit]odbc32.lib and odbccp32.lib are listed in the Inherited Values textBox when I edit Additional Dependencies[/edit]

That appears to be everything.

Thanks so much for the help, hopefully after having these questions answered (plus a little testing that I'll be doing until someone does), I can move on from this point. As I already have the majority of the programming finished from a prior project, if this works, all that will need finishing is the code to make things appear in Maya.

MDA

[daniel-faust]

Yes, you need to add those libraries (Foundation.lib and OpenMaya.lib), and it does not harm to add odbc32.lib and odbccp.lib, since they won't be linked if none of the functions they contain get called.

Make sure you have set up the paths for your libraries/include files

Tools->Options->Projects and Solutions->VC++ Directories
Show directories for:
Include files -> add a path to the c:\Maya7.0\include
Library files -> add a path to the c:\Maya7.0\library