Trouble with an old (Maya 7.0) plugin

[Anonymous]

Hello, this may be an odd request but I have the source to an old Maya 7.0 plugin and I'm having troubles getting it to work (in Maya 7). It seems to compile fine but it compiles as a ~9mb .dll and no .mll file. If I try compiling it as/changing the extension to mll then Maya throws an error stating "Error: Unable to dynamically load" which leads me to think its not a .mll file. IS there any difference between .dll and .mll files? And if it truely is a .dll file, is there something I am missing to get it to work in Maya 7? Would it work in a newer version of Maya? Thank you in advance.

[Anonymous]

Update: I managed to get the .mll file compiled, but when I try to run it in Maya 7.0 it says:

Error: Unable to dynamically load : C:/Program Files (x86)/Alias/Maya7.0/bin/plug-ins/MayaExporter.mll

Everything I'm trying to find online says things like path issues and stuff but I dont see how that could be the case considering its in the default folder. Could it be because I'm trying to use Maya 7.0 on a modern OS (win 10)? Thanks in advance.

[djonesuk]

It's possible you are compiling for 32-bits. Maya is 64-bits these days, so it will require a 64-bit dll.

[Anonymous]

Was Maya 7.0 available for 64 bits? Thats what I'm trying to use it on, as the plugin was made when 7.0 was out.

[djonesuk]

Sorry I misunderstood. Thought you were trying to compile for modern maya.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately I dont think I have the knowledge to compile it for modern Maya's. I can do simple work with code but I fear such a huge version change would require more skill than I possess. I assume its more than simply changing out the Maya 7.0 includes for a newer Maya?

[djonesuk]

Are there any other errors in the script editor?  

I would start by using Dependency Walker to check for missing dependencies.  Also check the correct functions are exported.  

After that, Process Monitor to check the status of the Load Image operation.  If the image is loading successfully that would point to your plugin being the source of the problem.  Not sure where you could get support in that case though.

[Anonymous]

Thats the only script window error, however DepWalker is showing lots of dependency errors revolving around what seems to be windows 8.1 API stuff. Would installing the windows 8.1 SDK install these dependencies as well? I'm not too familiar with what what the API files are available in. Thank you in advance.

[djonesuk]

Okay, dependency walker doesn't understand the new API-xxx dlls but that's not really an issue (unless you have a serious problem with your Windows installation). You should still be able to confirm the dll has properly exported the initialize, uninitialize and API version functions.

[Anonymous]

There are a few other .dll's its complaining about, like dpvs.dll, oci.dll, and ieshims.dll. I looked online for fixes but all I seem to find are those "dll download" sites. Would anyone here have any idea what these dll's are actually part of? Thanks in advance

[djonesuk]

I'm sorry I don't know about those dlls. The only thing I can suggest is that you read the documentation for your addon and check the prerequisites are installed on your system.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately there is no real documentation aside from comments. DepWalker is also complaining about a ton of dll's being 64bit when the plugin is looking for 32bit, would that matter that much? I solved the oci and dpvs problems but I'm still missing these:

API-MS-WIN-CORE-KERNEL32-PRIVATE-L1-1-1.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CORE-PRIVATEPROFILE-L1-1-1.DLL
API-MS-WIN-SERVICE-PRIVATE-L1-1-1.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CORE-SHUTDOWN-L1-1-1.DLL
EXT-MS-WIN-NTUSER-UICONTEXT-EXT-L1-1-0.DLL
IESHIMS.DLL

Which apparently are from Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 but even after installing that it still complains about them missing.

[Anonymous]

Also these are the errors DepWalker is throwing:

Error: At least one required implicit or forwarded dependency was not found.
Error: At least one module has an unresolved import due to a missing export function in an implicitly dependent module.
Error: Modules with different CPU types were found.
Warning: At least one delay-load dependency module was not found.
Warning: At least one module has an unresolved import due to a missing export function in a delay-load dependent module.

[Anonymous]

Ok I made some progress with process monitor. Even though DepWalker sees oci.dll (oracle related) and dpvs.dll (something to do with 3d?) process monitor is showing maya is having a hard time opening them. It opens them fine in a few areas but it seems to want to open them each in about 10 different locations on my computer. Is this normal? I'm going around placing these 2 dll's in those locations now to test it but it just seems odd that it would want them in multiple locations, opening the same file multiple times.

On a side note, does this forum not have an edit post button? I feel bad making multiple posts in a row.

[Anonymous]

I think I see why its looking all over for oci.dll, it seems to be looking in every PATH variable. Question is, why? Is it the wrong oci.dll? It says success for all the instances of oci.dll it found. It also says "file locked with only readers" for some of these osi.dll locations too, for the "create file mapping" operation, but it also has a success for the same operation.