How would one go about authoring a MAXtoA plugin?

[aaronfross]

Hi,

I'm not a programmer, but I want to port an Arnold plugin over from Maya to 3ds Max. What is the process? I am completely flummoxed by everything.

The docs say something about downloading the SDK, but I cannot find it on this website. Where is the SDK hosted, and how does one access it?

Furthermore, does the SDK have documentation? It took quite a bit of detective work for me to finally locate the MAXtoA plugins, which apparently have been moved to:

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\MAXtoA

And inside there is an SDK folder, with some samples, but I didn't see any documentation.

However, in the Maya MtoA plugin folder, there is a directory:

C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2020\docs\api

But this holds a collection of HTML files with no index.html, so I don't know how I'm supposed to access this information.

Specifically, the plugin I want to port over is a camera node. The way MAXtoA has implemented Arnold cameras is completely different from the way it's done in MtoA. Maya has a single Arnold camera with a pulldown list, 3ds Max has each Arnold camera type as a separate primitive. So how does one go about making this translation?

This all may be over my head, but if I can get some answers I can maybe enlist some help from someone who knows what they're doing.

Thanks,

Aaron

[aaronfross]

OK, I realized that I probably need a full license of Arnold for this. I've submitted a request through ADN.