Maya Workflow Kit for Blender
for Maya users, in Blender
The whole Maya workflow in Blender, in one install.
The tutorial ends. Your Channel Box comes back.
Maya Workflow Kit is a free, open-source Blender extension for people who learned 3D in Maya. It brings the Maya
workflow to Blender — hotbox and marking menus, Channel Box and Attribute Editor, menu sets, shelves and option
windows, Maya-style navigation and selection, and Maya scene concepts such as Freeze Transformations, Delete History,
groups, centimetres and pCube1 — rebuilt on top of Blender's own tools. Installing it changes nothing until you
choose Maya, and one click on the Maya | Blender switch gives you plain Blender back whenever a tutorial uses
Blender's own keys.
▶ Watch the half-minute tour (MP4) · Website
· Install · Quick start · FAQ
📥 Free download: GitHub Releases — see Installation
👋 Hi, a quick note from me
I spent years in Maya. When I finally tried to move to Blender, the software wasn't really the problem. My hands
were. I'd hold Space and nothing would pop up, I'd look for the Channel Box that wasn't there, and every few minutes
I'd catch myself reaching for a shelf. I made this hoping that people like me, who are used to Maya, can settle into
Blender a little more easily.
To be honest, it's still rough in places. Some Maya tools aren't there yet, and some don't feel quite right. I use it
myself and I'll keep improving it, but I can only fix what I know about. So if something breaks, feels off, or you
miss a Maya feature you use every day, please leave an issue.
Even a one-liner helps a lot. Want to help in other ways? Anything goes — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Thanks for giving it a try 🙂
Why this exists
Many artists learned 3D in Maya and spent years building muscle memory there. When they need to work in Blender,
because a team, a client, a class or a personal project uses it, that muscle memory works against them. This project
tries to make that part a little easier.
It is not meant to replace Maya or to move anyone away from it. Many people use both, and this kit is for the moments
when you are in Blender and want your hands to feel at home.
Maya Workflow Kit is a free, personal open-source project. There is no paid version, no donations requested, and no
commercial goal behind it. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Autodesk.
Contents
Features
Modern Smart Extrude grows, carves and stitches intersecting
faces, with a combined Move/Rotate/Scale manipulator and cut-through support.
Make Live uses the Status Line magnet and history menu to
manage reference meshes, with dark green labels/wires, viewport selection
restrictions and Move/Quad Draw projection onto the live list.
Everything below is in the current version. Maya menu items that Blender cannot do are still shown — greyed, with a
one-line note saying why and what to use instead.
Look & layout
- Maya layout, added to the open file as workspaces when you choose Maya: menu bar, Status Line, Shelf, Tool Box,
Outliner, Channel Box / Layer Editor tab stack, Time Slider and Range Slider, Help Line and Command Line.
- Maya's docking: Channel Box, Attribute Editor and Modeling Toolkit share one tab stack next to the viewport and
tear off into floating windows by their
::::: handle; Outliner and Tool Settings dock on the left.
- The Maya Move / Rotate / Scale manipulator (= / - resize it).
- Alt+B cycles the background of every 3D view through Maya's solid background colours.
- The kit uses your own Blender theme; see Recommended setup for a Maya-like look.
- Languages: the kit's menus, marking menus, shelves and tooltips follow Blender's Preferences > Interface >
Language — Japanese (日本語), Simplified Chinese (简体中文) and Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) so far, with Blender's
Translate switches for interface and tooltips. Corrections from native speakers are welcome. To add your own
language, see Translations.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
