Metasequoia 4 Plugins – part 6

I installed the latest Metasequoia (version 4.4.0) using the default path and it was installed in Program Files.

I changed the paths in the Project Property Pages for Debugging>Command and Build Events>Post-Build Event>Command Line accordingly.

The Post-Build Event>Command Line I used to copy the DLL to the Plugins folder now failed because of User Account Control (UAC) which requires administrator rights to copy to folders in Program Files.

I now use the following Command Line which uses Windows PowerShell to open another Windows PowerShell console with administrator rights and copy the DLL to the Plugins folder.

powershell.exe "Start-Process  powershell.exe  -verb runAs -windowstyle Hidden –ArgumentList 'cp $(TargetPath) ''$(ProgramFiles)\tetraface\Metasequoia4\Plugins\Station'''"

There are two single quotes surrounding $(ProgramFiles)\tetraface\Metasequoia4\Plugins\Station because of the space in “Program Files”.

UPDATE: May2015

I discovered I don't need administrator rights because in Windows 8.1 you should copy the plugins to the corresponding plugin type folders located at  "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\tetraface\Metasequoia4\Plugins\".

Create the folders if they do not exist first.

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Metasequoia 4 Plugins – part 5

We can create a project template to generate an empty Metasequoia plugin project with most of the project properties already set.

Once we have created the project template we can select it from the list of templates in the File>Add>New Project dialog.

This means we won’t have to set all the project’s properties manually every time we create a new plugin.

Metasequoia 4 Plugins – part 4

This time we will create an Import plugin.

I will not use the class technique for creating the plugin.

I wrote a Metasequoia Python script [link] to import MilkShape 3D *.ms3d files and will write a plugin to do the same.

Plugins have access to more of Metasequoia’s inbuilt functions than scripts.

MilkShape 3D released a *.ms3d viewer with C++ source code [link].

We will use the *.ms3d file loading code from the viewer in our plugin to read the *.ms3d file so download msViewer2.zip and extract it somewhere.

Metasequoia 4 Plugins – part 3

For more practise with creating plugins we will build a sample plugin that is bundled with mqdl’s Keynote plugin [link]. [web.archive.org]

Keynote is a plugin that allows animating in Metasequoia and includes another plugin to save the animations to *.x format.

The sample plugin included with Keynote is an Export plugin and demonstrates how to get the data from Keynote so you can save an animation.

The sample plugin doesn’t actually save a file but displays it in a console window.

The plugin needs the Keynote plugin (bone.dll) installed because it uses Keynote functions to access the data.

Instead of installing the Japanese version of Keynote there is a translated version available at the Sword of Moonlight forum [link].

I only tested with the Japanese version and the sample files and sample plugin are only included in the Japanese download.

To access the data Keynote must also be activated in the command panel otherwise the sample plugin reports an error.

Metasequoia 4 Plugins – part 2

I will write a plugin that does nothing much to show the basic process.

Open “mqsdk_en.html” which is found in the SDK root folder and click “Using Visual Studio” to open the instructions for writing a plugin for Metasequoia.

We configured the solution in the previous post so can jump to step 3 of the instructions and add a new project to the solution.

Metasequoia 4 Plugins – Getting Started

New features can be added to a registered version of Metasequoia by installing plugins.

A plugin is a *.dll (dynamic link library) file.

A *.dll is a type of program created within a software development environment such as Lazarus, Delphi, Visual Studio, CodeBlocks, Orwell's DevCPP, NetBeans, ZinjaI, Pelles C, Falcon C++, CodeLite or text editor/compiler/linker combination.

A *.dll cannot be executed by double clicking on it for instance, but must be loaded by another program and just contains coded functions which are used by the other program.

tetraface Inc. provides a Software Development Kit (SDK) that must be used to write plugin *.dlls for Metasequoia.

In this post I will outline the process of building the plugin examples included in the SDK.