MayaMMD for Autodesk Maya

Import and animate MMD (MikuMikuDance) models in Autodesk Maya.

Supports PMX models, VMD motions, and VPD poses — with bone hierarchies, IK handles, skinning, materials, morph targets, and more. Runs on Maya 2024 and later on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Alpha version: MayaMMD is in early development. The current focus is read-only — importing models, motions, and poses for viewing and animation. Editing, adding, modifying, or deleting models is not yet supported, and several MMD features are still missing (see below).

Features

✅ Supported   |   🔄 Partial   |   ❌ Not yet supported

PMX Model Import

• ✅ Mesh geometry — positions, normals, UVs, triangle faces
• ✅ Bone hierarchy — full parent/child structure, tail joints, rest-pose capture
• ✅ BDEF1/2/4 smooth skinning
• 🔄 Custom CCD IK solver — works for animation playback; manual manipulation can break (last bone doesn't always reach the IK handle)
• ✅ INHERIT_ROTATION / INHERIT_TRANSLATION constraints
• 🔄 Materials — imported via openPBRSurface (Maya's shader, not MMD's); material system will be redesigned in the future
• ✅ Vertex morphs — Maya blendShape, editable in Shape Editor
• ✅ Bone morphs — custom DG node with quaternion SLERP
• 🔄 SDEF/QDEF skinning — falls back to BDEF2
• 🔄 Fixed axis / local coordinate — enforced during VMD/VPD apply, not interactively in the viewport
• 🔄 Rigid bodies — visual guides only
• ❌ Physics simulation — rigid bodies, joints, soft bodies
• ❌ Sphere, toon, edge materials and ambient color
• ❌ UV, group, and material morphs
• ❌ PMX export

VMD Motion

• ✅ Bone keyframes — quaternion SLERP with Bezier interpolation
• ✅ Morph weight animation — drives blendShape and bone morph targets
• ✅ IK-compatible animation through the custom CCD solver
• ❌ Camera, light, and shadow keyframes (parsed but not applied)
• ❌ Animation layers for multi-VMD stacking
• ❌ VMD export

VPD Pose

• ✅ Full-body pose import with optional keyframing
• ✅ IK chain and fixed-axis handling
• ❌ VPD export

Workflow & UI

• ✅ Dockable Maya workspaceControl panel
• ✅ Pose editor with morph weight sliders
• 🔄 Reset to Bind Pose — currently broken
• ✅ Multiple models in one scene — selection-based targeting
• 🔄 Undo — individual operations undoable, not the whole import

Installation

Quick Install (Drag & Drop)

1. Download the latest release zip from the Releases page.
2. Extract the zip to any folder.
3. Drag install.py onto the Maya viewport.
4. Click Install in the confirmation dialog — the plugin loads automatically.
5. Click the MayaMMD shelf button (or run MayaMMD in the Script Editor) to open the UI.

Note: If the shelf button doesn't appear, open Plugin Manager (Windows → Settings/Preferences → Plugin Manager), find MayaMMD, and check Loaded. You'll only need to do this once — Maya remembers loaded plugins across restarts.

Manual Installation

1. Inside the release zip, find the folder matching your Maya version and OS:
   • Maya 2024 → MayaMMD-Maya2024-<Platform>/
   • Maya 2025 → MayaMMD-Maya2025-<Platform>/
   • Maya 2026 → MayaMMD-Maya2026-<Platform>/
   • Maya 2027 → MayaMMD-Maya2027-<Platform>/
2. Copy both MayaMMD.mod and the MayaMMD/ folder into your Maya modules directory (see platform paths below).
3. Restart Maya.
4. Open Plugin Manager (Windows → Settings/Preferences → Plugin Manager).
5. Find MayaMMD and check Loaded.

Platform-specific modules directory:

• Windows: C:\Users\<username>\Documents\maya\<version>\modules\
• Linux: ~/maya/<version>/modules/
• macOS: ~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/<version>/modules/

Auto-Load on Maya Startup

MayaMMD installs as a Maya Module, so it loads automatically on startup once installed. No userSetup.py changes are needed.

If you installed manually and the plugin doesn't auto-load, open Plugin Manager and check Auto-load next to MayaMMD.

⚠️ Windows Defender / SmartScreen — false positive: The plugin .mll is not code-signed, so Windows Defender or SmartScreen may occasionally flag the release zip or the .mll as a "virus". This is a false positive common with unsigned plugins and third-party builds — the project is open source, so you can always verify the binary by building it from source or by checking the file on VirusTotal.

If Windows blocks it, allow it once:

1. Open Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Protection history.
2. Find the MayaMMD entry and choose Actions → Allow on device (or Restore).
3. If the plugin still won't load, add an exclusion for your Maya modules/plug-ins folder under Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Exclusions → Add.

Development

Prerequisites

• Maya 2026 (or 2024/2025/2027) with the Maya SDK installed
• CMake 3.21+
• Visual Studio 2022 (Windows) with C++ desktop workload
• Python 3.11 (matching your Maya version)

One-Time Setup

1. Build and install the native plugin:

   cmake --preset maya2026-release
   cmake --build out/build/maya2026-release
   cmake --install out/build/maya2026-release

   The .mll ends up in out/install/maya2026-release/plug-ins/ — not in the source tree.

   Note: The Maya SDK is proprietary Autodesk software and is not included in this repository. On the first cmake --preset ... run, CMake auto-downloads the SDK for your Maya version into out/.sdk/ (requires Python 3.10+). To use an existing SDK instead, pass -DSDK_DIR=/path/to/maya-sdk.

2. Configure Maya to find the plugin. Copy the generated module file into Maya's modules directory:

   Platform	Command
   Windows	copy out\install\maya2026-release\MayaMMD.mod "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\maya\2026\modules\"
   Linux	cp out/install/maya2026-release/MayaMMD.mod ~/maya/2026/modules/
   macOS	cp out/install/maya2026-release/MayaMMD.mod ~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2026/modules/

3. Remove old Maya.env entries (if any). The .mod file handles MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH and PYTHONPATH automatically — manual entries in Maya.env that point to the project root or mmd/ may conflict.

4. Launch Maya — MayaMMD should appear in Plugin Manager.

Daily Workflow

• C++ or Python changes → rebuild + install, then Plugin Manager → unload → reload

  cmake --build out/build/maya2026-release && cmake --install out/build/maya2026-release

• Run integration tests:

  ctest --preset default -L maya

Note: Maya standalone (mayapy) does not process .mod files. Integration tests use direct MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH + PYTHONPATH environment variables set by CTest — no manual configuration needed.

Assets

MayaMMD ships without bundled models, motions, or poses — you add your own files for testing and development. Binary asset files are gitignored and never committed to the repository; only the helper scripts and README.md files are tracked.

assets/
├── models/             # Place .pmx model files here
├── motions/            # Place .vmd motion files here
├── poses/              # Place .vpd pose files here
├── models_database/    # Generated model metadata (JSON)
├── motions_database/   # Generated motion metadata (JSON)
├── poses_database/     # Generated pose metadata (JSON)
├── pmx_model_files.py  # Generated: PMX file list
├── vmd_motion_files.py # Generated: VMD file list
├── vpd_pose_files.py   # Generated: VPD file list
└── assets_utils.py     # Helpers used by tests and scripts

Adding assets

1. Place files in the matching folder:

   • assets/models/ — .pmx model files
   • assets/motions/ — .vmd motion files
   • assets/poses/ — .vpd pose files

2. Regenerate the file lists so tests and benchmarks can discover them:

   python scripts/database/generate_file_list.py

   This scans assets/models|motions|poses and updates assets/pmx_model_files.py, assets/vmd_motion_files.py, and assets/vpd_pose_files.py.

Building the metadata database

Structured JSON metadata (used for testing, statistics, and regression checks) is extracted into the *_database/ folders:

python scripts/database/extract_model_info.py   # → assets/models_database/
python scripts/database/extract_motion_info.py  # → assets/motions_database/
python scripts/database/extract_pose_info.py    # → assets/poses_database/

Utility scripts:

python scripts/database/format_json.py   # Pretty-print JSON dumps
python scripts/database/minify_json.py   # Minify JSON dumps before publishing

Note: Your models/motions/poses and the generated database JSON files are gitignored and are not part of the repository. Add your own files — tests will automatically discover them.