Visual Studio Setup for Maya Python and Qt4 programming

I'm following a course on 3d using Maya and having worked as a programmer for a couple of years i want to learn to code some python tools for Maya as well as some C++ plug-ins. So the first thing to do is to choose the development environment.

I ve heard in some places that people tend to use SublimeText and that it's really easy to configure for Maya python programming. Well the truth is i'm rather used to VS since i ve programmed in C++ and C# doing some things on my own. Plus, lately i ve been programming some stuff in python and pygame and i used VS with the python tools so this is my selected IDE.

Now i will explain how to setup Visual Studio 2013 for Maya Python programming.

VISUAL STUDIO 2013 SETUP FOR MAYA TOOLS PROGRAMMING IN PYTHON

1. Download and install Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS).You can get them here.

2. Download and install PyQt4 for python 2.7 (since Maya 2015 is using python version 2.7.3). You can get it here. You need to install PyQt4 in the following path:

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\Python\Lib\site-packages

3. Open VS 2013 and create a Python Application project.
Under project properties->debug you need to add the following folders to the search path:

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\devkit\other\pymel\extras\completion\py
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\Python\Lib\site-packages\maya
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\Python\Lib\site-packages\pymel
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\Python\Lib\site-packages\PySide
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\Python\Lib\site-packages\PyQt4

Now we have autocompletion for maya.cmds, pyqt4 etc!!

Under "interpreter path" add the line:

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\bin\mayapy.exe

You can have the mayapy.exe interpreter if you want or the one in python27 folder if you prefer. We ve made sure both python version are the same 2.7

4. Now we will add the possibility to execute code from VS directly into Maya.
Download the fast script execution (toMaya) by Josbalcaen here.

- once installed, restart VS 2013
- go to Tools->Options->Keyboard
- search for "ToMaya" and create a new shortcut for example ALT+SPACE

5. write the following code in the Maya script editor

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import maya.cmds as cmds try: cmds.commandPort(name="127.0.0.1:6000", close=True, echoOutput=True) except:    pass cmds.commandPort(name="127.0.0.1:6000", echoOutput=True)

and put it in a custom shelf or configure your userSetup.mel file to execute the script on Maya startup.

Click on the script, now Maya is listening to this port which is the one ToMaya uses for sending the scripts via VS.

That's all, we should have maya.cmds, PyQt and Python auto completion along with direct execution in Maya!!.

If you prefer, i ve gathered all the necessary stuff needed and put it here. (except for the PTVS, sorry!!)