I’ve struggled and saw a lot of people struggling to get the work of Sven Fraeys regarding executing Maxscript in the most recent versions of Notepad++ (6.1.5+) so I’ve decided to have a look at it and try to tie it to my current pipeline.

My ultimate goal would be to be able to get Maxscript language definitions in PyCharm but from my research, that requires writing a IntelliJ plugin in Java and I really don’t want to go there now.

I’m definitely not a Sublime guy and I use Notepad++ everyday for most of my text editing, so it only made sense that if I wanted to leave the Maxscript Editor behind for good, I would go with Notepad++.

The other issue for running MXS from Npp is the dependency on ExternalIDE.exe from Sven, and this was a problem to me, because I already have an efficient way of running any type of file in 3ds Max with my module run.py from the YCDIVFX MaxPlus Packages ,  so it only makes sense to tie up Npp to this and have a coherent workflow for either developing with MaxPlus and python or pure Maxscript. This means, NO MORE Maxscript editor!

Added benefits on all of this?

– Maxscript with auto-complete!
– Use latest version of Notepad++ (at the time I’m writing this, 6.6.2)
– One module to rule them all, we can now run externally python and maxscript files with run.py
– PyCharm for python, Notepad++ for Maxscript/Python
– No more development inside 3ds Max and Maxscript Editor (although it’s based on Scintilla like Notepad++)
– More flexibility with Notepad++, can install plugins, etc.

Let’s get to the point, how can I haz!? Easy, just update YCDIVFX MaxPlus Packages and check the ‘externalsNpp’ folder, you’ll find 3 files there.

– MaxScript.xml: contains auto-complete info
– userDefineLang.xml: syntax highlighting and language definitions
– shortcuts.xml: custom command to execute the python module

Before copying the files to the correct paths, make sure you edit shortcuts.xml and setup the right paths for your YCDIVFX MaxPlus Packages folder. If you are running3ds Max 2014 Extension and not 3ds Max 2015 change %ADSK_3DSMAX_x64_2015% to %ADSK_3DSMAX_x64_2014%. Default path for run.py is: C:YCDIVFX_MaxPlusrun.py

So after we did that we copy the files to the following directories:

– MaxScript.xml: C:Program Files (x86)Notepad++pluginsAPIs
– userDefineLang.xml: C:Users[username]AppDataRoamingNotepad++
– shortcuts.xml: C:Users[username]AppDataRoamingNotepad++

Default shortcut for executing files is Ctrl+E. Gentle reminder, you need to have an instance of 3ds Max runnnig and remember to Ctrl+S and then Ctrl+E 🙂 Also, if you need to make changes to any of the files, make sure you do it with standard Notepad and have Notepad++ closed since it blocks the files while open.

Get it here!

Hopefully this makes your life easier and faster.
This wouldn’t be possible without all the hard work from Sven Fraeys and Christoph Bülter so don’t forget to visit their website and check their work!