README.md

HowTo: pyconsole

This example integrates the nice pyqtconsole as an alternative to the 3ds Max Listener. The console is automatically added to the "RightDockWidgetArea" and tabbed on startup. A menu item allows to create other dockable instances of the console.

This console behaves a lot more like a normal python console and provides syntax highlighting and autocomplete on top of that. Because the console uses Qt, integrating it in 3ds Max is really easy.

Understanding the code

The nice stuff is in pyqtconsole. Here I show how it is integrated to max.

The new_console function:

def new_console(tabto = None, floating = False, dockingarea = QtCore.Qt.RightDockWidgetArea):
    """
    Create a new console and float it as a max widget
    tabto: name of a widget on top of which the console should be tabbed
    floating: True to float the console, False to leave it docked

Retrieves the main 3dsMax windows. This is a Qt window.

    main_window = GetQMaxMainWindow()

It then instanciates a new console:

    # create and setup a console
    console = PythonConsole(formats=HUGOS_THEME)
    console.setStyleSheet("background-color: #333333;")

And creates a QDockWidget as a container for the console.

    # create a dock widget for the console
    dock_widget = QDockWidget(main_window)
    dock_widget.setWidget(console)
    dock_widget.setObjectName("pyconsole")
    dock_widget.setWindowTitle("Python Console")
    main_window.addDockWidget(dockingarea, dock_widget)

The widget is docked by default and optionally tabbed if tabto is specified:

    if (not tabto is None):
        tabw = main_window.findChild(QWidget, tabto)
        main_window.tabifyDockWidget(tabw, dock_widget)

If the floating argument is true, the widget is floated instead of being docked. And then it is showed.

    dock_widget.setFloating(floating)
    dock_widget.show()

Finally, the console is hooked to the qt event processing mechanism. This is pretty awesome, no 3dsMax specific code is needed!

    # make the console do stuff
    console.eval_queued()

The awesomeness here (aside from the pyqtconsole that is great) is really that pymxs (or any other 3ds Max specific thing) is not even needed!

The python + Qt combo in 3ds Max is really fantastic!