Download

Here you can download the software, the tutorials and the documentation for your platform of choice. I particularly recommend you to download the documentation and the tutorials (they're all in one file), because they're the fastest and simplest way to learn to use Iguana: they are five simple and short tutorials that will make you have a journey through all its features (old and new ones).
In the documentation you will find a lot of useful informations, too. Also, with the documentation you will find a couple of Maya scenes containing some skydomes already made for you (emispheres emitting light, you can use them as they are or you can trim off parts in order to use just a portion) and a sun (a mesh the shape of a disk that simulates the sun) - you will find them under the "files" directory when you uncompress the downloaded file. But please go through the tutorials first, to be sure you know how to use them.

Iguana needs to have Maya 6.0 / 6.0.1 installed in order to run, and it doesn't work with previous versions of Maya. You don't need to have a license for Maya installed to use Iguana, and Iguana doesn't need a license to run either - remember? It's free :-)

Windows users

Here's the software - iguana_inst.zip. It's a WinZip archive (if you don't have it, you can get it here), containing an auto-extracting installator, but please have a look at the installation instructions below.
Here are the documentation and the tutorials, all in one file (again, VERY recommended). There's no specific place where these should be put into, simply put them where you want, as long as the path of the directory you put these things into doesn't contain spaces; avoid paths like "C:\my stuff\" for instance, because spaces in files and directory names send Iguana crazy. Avoid putting them on the desktop too, because path names for the desktop are something like "C:\Documents and Settings\...\Desktop", so there are spaces there. Well, go and have fun, now...

Installation instructions for Windows:  

Double-click the unzipped installator's icon to launch it, and after a welcome screen you will be asked for your Maya 6.0 / 6.0.1 installation directory. It should be in "C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya6.0" (it's the default installation directory. On your machine, the letter "C:" could be actually another one, depending on the disk where Maya was installed, and the folder "Program Files" could have another name, depending on your operating system language), so leave it as it is if this is your case. If you installed Maya 6.0 / 6.0.1 in a different directory (or in a different disk), click on the "Browse" button and look for the installation directory of Maya on your machine.

The installator will put all the files needed in the proper directories, and will even create a link on your desktop to "igviewer", the Iguana's file viewer (it's useful for batch renders). Every user who wants to use Iguana on your machine must repeat the installation: if you install it and another user doesn't, he/she won't be able to use it unless he/she installs it too (this because the installation copies some scripts in your Documents folder, so these scripts are not available to other users unless they install Iguana too).

The installator does everything except one thing: it doesn't create an environment variable that's needed by Iguana when a batch render is started (sorry guys, the installer maker I used doesn't seem to provide a way to do that, so you must do it by hand). This environment variable is not needed if you render with Iguana interactively or in the Render View, but it's needed if you set off a batch render (either from within Maya or from the command line). With Maya 6.0 / 6.0.1, if you are using an executable that's linked with Maya's libraries (and Iguana of course is), you have to define an environment variable that says where is Maya. Sorry guys, it's a requirement I couldn't get around - look for the icon for "My Computer" on your desktop; click it with the right mouse button and from the pop-up menu that appears choose "Properties": a new panel will appear (System Properties). Click on the "Advanced" tab, then on the "Environment variables" button: another panel will pop up. Here you can add the environment variable needed: click on the "New" button to add it as a user variable, and you'll see yet another panel appearing where you can finally add your variable. Type MAYA_LOCATION as its name and the installation directory of Maya as its value (if it's installed in the default directory on your machine, it should be something like "C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya6.0". On your machine, the letter "C:" could be actually another one, depending on the disk where Maya was installed, and the folder "Program Files" could have another name, depending on your operating system language).

Linux users

Here's the software - iguana.tgz . Inside it you will also find a README text file with the installation instructions, they are reported below too.
Here are the documentation and the tutorials, all in one file (again, VERY recommended). As for the software, first uncompress the archives with "gunzip" then extract the files with "tar -xf". There's no specific place where these should be put into, simply put them where you want, as long as the path of the directory you put these things into doesn't contain spaces; avoid paths like "/usr/people/my stuff" for instance, because spaces in files and directory names send Iguana crazy. Well, go and have fun, now...

Installation instructions for Linux:

Before going on, you will need super-user permissions: switch to root with "su -", or log out and log in back as root. Now uncompress the file "iguana.tgz" with "gunzip iguana.tgz", then un-tar the uncompressed file with "tar -xf iguana.tar" that creates a folder called "iguana" and puts all the files in it.

Change directory to the newly created "iguana" directory (with "cd iguana"). As you can see, there are three directories in it, "bin", "plug-ins" and "scripts". Do as following:

- change directory to the one called "bin" (with "cd bin"); there are three executables ("iguana", "igviewer" and "interactiveIgviewer"), copy or move them to the directory "/usr/local/bin";

- go up one level and go to the "plug-ins" directory (with "cd ../plug-ins"); there's only one file there ("iguana.so"), copy or move it to the directory "/usr/aw/maya6.0/bin/plug-ins" (of course, if Maya 6.0 / 6.0.1 is installed in a directory that is different from "/usr/aw/maya6.0" on your machine, the directory you have to copy that file to will be called "<your Maya 6.0 installation dir>/bin/plug-ins");

- then go up one level and go to the "scripts" directory (with "cd ../scripts"); there are six MEL scripts, copy or move them to the directory "<your home dir>/maya/6.0/scripts", where "<your home dir>" is the path name of your user's home directory (NOT the root home directory!). That is, if your user's home directory is "/home/<your_name>", then the directory you have to copy or move those scripts to will be "/home/<your_name>/maya/6.0/scripts".

Interactive Iguana needs some special tuning of your window manager in order to always keep its window on front of the others. I recommend using KDE. All that follows refers to your normal user account, and NOT to the super-user, so if you're logged as root please log out now and log in back with your normal user account.
If you're using KDE, please do as following: open the KDE Control Center, select Desktop and then select Window Behavior: look for the Focus section and from the Policy pull-down list, select "Focus Follows Mouse", then make sure that the flags called Auto raise and Click raise are switched off.
If you're using Gnome/Sawfish, you could have different ways of achieving the desired effect, because different versions of the Sawfish window manager have different options and placements. Suggested setups include enter/exit for window focus and don't raise window on focus.
Regardless of these settings, if you click on Maya's window titlebar you will bring it on front anyway, so if that happens all you have to do is to click on the icon of Interactive Iguana in the applications bar to bring it on front again.

If you want you can put a shortcut to "igviewer" on your desktop. It's Iguana's file viewer, as the name says, and you can drag and drop Iguana's files to igviewer's icon to open and see them (it's useful for batch renders). But double-clicking the icon won't bring up igviewer, because it can only be invoked with a name of a file to open. Actually, on Linux the way I always use is to give "igviewer <file>" in a shell.