topic Embed external application in 3ds Max Programming Forum

Embed external application

tagopinath — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 06:54:20 GMT

Hello everyone,

I am trying to embed as external application inside 3ds Max through Qt dialog in our plugin.

This is working fine, but issue is, i am not able to see the Title and Menu bar of that external application.

Here is the code what i am trying.

QWindow* window = QWindow::fromWinId(hWnd); QWidget* container = QWidget::createWindowContainer(window);// , centralWidget); QMdiSubWindow* subWindow = new QMdiSubWindow(this); subWindow->setWidget(container); subWindow->setAttribute(Qt::WA_DeleteOnClose); subWindow->setWindowTitle("Program 1"); subWindow->setWindowState(Qt::WindowMaximized); Qt::WindowFlags flags = subWindow->windowFlags(); flags |= Qt::FramelessWindowHint; flags |= Qt::WindowSystemMenuHint; subWindow->setWindowFlags(flags); container->show(); QHBoxLayout* buttonLayout = new QHBoxLayout(this); buttonLayout->addWidget(container); QVBoxLayout* mainLayout = new QVBoxLayout(this); //// ... add other widgets ... mainLayout->addLayout(buttonLayout); mainLayout->addStretch(); setLayout(mainLayout);

in Qt, they are saying no option to show the menu.

i tried the other way without using Qt (using SetParent), in that method, its showing menu and title bar. But issue is, whenever a dialog is opened in the external application, then this embedded dialog is getting hidden. and click on viewport again, its showing again.

Is there any other way to implement this ? Please suggest.

Regards,

Gopinath.

Re: Embed external application

denisT.MaxDoctor — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 06:27:06 GMT

What kind of external application?

Re: Embed external application

istan — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 21:16:45 GMT

@tagopinath wrote:
I am trying to embed..

What do you mean with "embed"? How you did that in Max?

Re: Embed external application

denisT.MaxDoctor — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:24:16 GMT

Let's make our list of questions complete...
Why do you need to embed? 😁

Re: Embed external application

tagopinath — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 03:06:07 GMT

Hi Denis and istan,

Thanks for your questions.

I just wanted to bring one other application inside 3ds max.

I found a simple way to do that by making max window as parent and external application hwnd as child, which is working fine.

Thanks again for your time.

Regards,

Gopi.