X64 Plugins using Visual Studio C++ Express and Maya 2013

Coding
1

Hey All,

Has anyone ever had success getting the Visual Studio Express C++ 2010 environment up and running successfully to build plugins for 64bit Maya?

Or has anyone successfully compiled 64bit plugins for Maya 2013 using Express 2012?

For me, I’ve downloaded the windows development sdks that should have allowed for the 64bit compiler, but during my configuration setup I can’t get it to show up as an option.

Thanks!

2

[QUOTE=Sariel;23008]Hey All,

Has anyone ever had success getting the Visual Studio Express C++ 2010 environment up and running successfully to build plugins for 64bit Maya?

Or has anyone successfully compiled 64bit plugins for Maya 2013 using Express 2012?

For me, I’ve downloaded the windows development sdks that should have allowed for the 64bit compiler, but during my configuration setup I can’t get it to show up as an option.

Thanks![/QUOTE]

I didn’t really look into it, just saw your problem and here’s a fast answer, iirc with Express you can’t build 64bit stuff by default you have to install Windows SDK 7.1 and after install set it in your Property Pages > Configuration Properties > General > Platform Toolset

3

Great thanks, I’ll give that a try and see how it goes and if it works I’ll report back as an fyi. :slight_smile:

4

So, it turns out that it was a lot more involved than I had suspected. Not only was I missing a compiler patch, there is a known bug with the 2010 redistributables that prevents the windows sdk from installing correctly.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2519277

So here is a pretty definitive install method for anyone that needs to be able to compile 64bit plugins for Maya 2013 and it’s extension in C++ Express 2010. If you have any Visual Studio 2010 installs including the sdks, redistributables, distributions, I highly recommend uninstalling them before you start. This will make sure that your order of operations ensures a good install.

  1. Install the Windows SDK 7.1. It can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=8279

  2. Install the Windows SDK 7.1 patch. It can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=4422
    This was the patch for the missing compiler.

  3. Install Visual Studio C++ Express 2010 from http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs

  4. (Optional but recommended) Install the Visual Studio C++ Express 2010 SP1 to get the up to date version of the debugger and tools. http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=23691

And after about 30 minutes of installation, you’re ready! Once you go into the configuration manager you can now get access to the 64bit architecture and start building 64bit plugins.