Maya Modules and Arnold Plugins

[alan-LFL]

Hi all,

So in the docs (https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2020/ENU/?guid=Maya_SDK_MERGED_Distributing_Maya_Plug_ins_Dist...) it discusses packaging modules for Maya, but in this it doesn't address whether there's any support for Arnold plugins within Maya modules or how one would go about that.

Is there a way to append to environment variables within mod files? That seems like one potential path to being able to package Arnold plugins in a maya module. If not, is there some other approach or syntax I could use for this?

Same thing applies for mtoa extensions and their configuration.

I've got significant interdependencies between maya tooling and arnold plugins, so I'd like to be able to package them together cleanly, without requiring any non-standard installation steps for users if possible.

Cheers,

Alan.

[Stephen.Blair · Accepted solution]

Hi Alan

You can append to environment variables:

From https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2020/ENU/?guid=Maya_SDK_MERGED_Distributing_Maya_Plug_ins_Maya...

Append to the current value of a variable

You can append to the current value of a variable using the + and/or : operators. Examples as follows:

PATH += c:/myModule/bin adds ;c:/myModule/bin to the current value of the environment variable PATH.

PATH +:= bin adds ;’module location’/bin to the current value of the environment variable PATH.

Also see this page: https://around-the-corner.typepad.com/adn/2012/07/distributing-files-on-maya-maya-modules.html

Arnold plugins and MtoA extensions can be "installed" in MtoA through environment variables.

With something like Yeti, which provides it's own Maya nodes and plugin, and also Arnold plugins and MtoA extensions, you can use a module file.

See this old example:

https://arnoldsupport.com/2014/10/30/mtoa-pimping-your-yeti-module-file/

Maybe now I would set ARNOLD_PLUGIN_PATH in my Yeti mod file.