Softimage SDK Programmer's Guide > Customizing Softimage using the SDK > Self-Installing Plug-ins >

# Getting Started with the Plug-in Wizard

The best way to get started developing a self-installing plug-in is to use one of the Softimage SDK wizards to generate the initial code for your plug-in.

For C++ and C#, the wizards also generate a Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010 project (.vcproj/.vcxproj), a Visual C++ project (.dsp), and a GNUMakefile.

There are specific wizards for operators, commands, properties, events, filters, and shaders.

## To generate the code for an empty self-installing plug-in

1. Click File Plug-ins to open the Plug-in Manager.

   Tip

   In the Tools Development Environment layout, click the Plug-ins tab to switch to the Plug-in Manager view.

2. Do one of the following:

   - To create the plug-in in the User location, click File New Empty Plug-in.

   - To create the property in a workgroup or an Add-on directory, expand the location in the Plug-in Tree, right-click the Plugins folder and click New Empty Plug-in.

   The Plug-in Wizard appears.

3. In the Plug-in Name box, type a name for the plug-in.

   The first character in a plug-in name should be a letter. Subsequent characters can be letters, numbers, underscore (_) characters, or spaces.

   If you include spaces in the plug-in name, the wizard replaces the spaces with underscores when it creates the plug-in file.

4. In the Author box, type a name for the plug-in.

5. In the Script Language list, click the language you want to generate.

6. Click OK to generate the code and open the generated file in a scripteditor.

   If you selected a scripting language, the wizard also loads the plug-in. If you generated C++, you'll have to build the plug-in first.