MayaMetaBridge for Maya

MotionForge for Maya turns one line of text into character motion inside Maya 2027, moves that motion onto your own character, and can send it on to Cascadeur. Every engine runs on your own computer; nothing is uploaded anywhere.

It is a port of the MotionForge Blender add-on to Maya. It is not the Blender add-on, and it does not use the Blender add-on's licence.

📖 Install guide and full manual: https://mayalhc.github.io/Maya_MotionForge_Wiki/ (English, and 한국어 from the top of the page)

• Text to Motion — describe a movement in a sentence. Takes are generated by the ARDY engine and held until you bake them to keys.

• Live Path — steer a character in real time with a target cone and bake the result. Each take can have its own length, and takes on the same rig run one after another.

• Kimodo and MotionBricks — two more motion engines, with their own panels and Reset All.

• Retarget onto your own character — joint by joint (MotionForge), or through Maya's HumanIK, or onto an mGear EPIC biped control rig. Legs can be solved on IK so the feet stay planted.

• HumanIK — define a rig as a HumanIK character and build its Control Rig from the window.

• mGear (optional) — if the open-source mGear framework is installed, a MotionForge character can wear mGear's EPIC biped rig. Takes are keyed onto the mGear controls, FK and IK both.

• Send to Cascadeur — keys, or a whole character, sent to Cascadeur, with a live link and a Maya-only plug-in (it does not clash with the Blender add-on's Cascadeur plug-in).

• Autodesk Maya 2027, Windows 10/11, 64-bit

• An Engine Folder with the ARDY, Kimodo and MotionBricks engines. The Install Engines button downloads them (about 18 GB in total, so allow time and disk space). An existing Engine Folder from the Blender add-on works as it is.

• A GPU makes ARDY fast (Vulkan). Without one it runs on the CPU.

• Cascadeur is optional, and only needed for sending motion to it or for the live link.

• mGear is optional.

• The MotionForge module and plug-in, with a Maya shelf and a menu

• The Cascadeur plug-in installer (Maya-only link)

• The engine download manifests and third-party licence notices

• The English and Korean guides, and the licence text

MotionForge for Maya is not open source. It is sold under the Chamiseul License:

• One licence per purchaser, for one person, on computers that person owns.

• Copying, redistributing, reselling, renting, transferring the licence, modifying the files, and reverse engineering are not permitted.

• The third-party components (NVIDIA models and sources, ggml and others) keep their own licences, unchanged. Their notices ship with the product.

• The software is provided as is, without warranty.

The full licence text is included in the download as LICENSE.txt.

Digital downloads are non-refundable once accessed.

Unofficial tool. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Autodesk (Maya), Cascadeur, NVIDIA or the mGear project. Maya, Autodesk and Cascadeur are trademarks of their owners.

MotionBricks person (SOMA Human)

• In the MotionBricks panel, + now asks for a SOMA Human or a Unitree G1 Robot. The person has the same Style, Go, Speed, Generate, Bake, Live and Retarget as the robot.

• The person's model runs on the CPU in a mayapy of its own (ONNX Runtime) - no GPU needed.

• 14 styles come with Install Engines: idle, walk, slow walk, jog, run, injured, stealth, scared, zombie, happy, boxing, gun, and elbow and hand crawling. Make Missing makes any that are missing (or that you deleted) with Kimodo in a few minutes; Save as Style adds your own from a take of at least 60 frames.

• End on Pose Key - pose and key the character on the frames it should arrive at; the take is made up to there.

• Poses to Use (1-4) and Transition Early By - flow through several poses instead of stopping at each one.

• Arrive in a Clip Pose - end a take in a pose taken from a style's clip.

Takes for MotionBricks characters

• Every character holds a list of takes (+ Take / - Take / Show Take), each with its own style, direction or target, speed, seed and length. They run one after the other on one timeline; Generate Motion makes all the ticked ones, each starting where the one before ended, and Bake writes them into one animation.

• Takes are saved with the scene.

MMD models, both ways

• With maya_mmd_tools installed, the Retarget panel has an MMD box: Import MMD Model (PMX) and Import MMD Motion (VMD).

• As a source: an imported model appears in the source list as MMD: <name>, and its VMD keys are copied onto your character like any take.

• As a target: set Rig Type to MMD model (Auto-Detect finds one too). Bones are read by their MMD names, so a model that calls its arm upperarm_L works as well as one that calls it left_arm; a model registered as a group is found as well.

• While a take is baked onto an MMD model, its leg IK is switched off so the keyed legs are what you see: the knees stand as keyed from the first frame, the skin's D-bones (left_leg_d and the like) follow the legs, and the leg IK controllers ride along with the feet. Reset All switches the leg IK back on and puts the controllers back. The arm, elbow, hand and neck solvers are left as they are.

• Torso and limbs are mapped; finger and twist bones are not yet.

Engine updates

• Install Engines also updates: a runtime file that differs from the published one is replaced, so a newer Kimodo, ARDY or MotionBricks runtime reaches an older install, and the person's styles come with it.

• Check for Updates (in the window, or MotionForge > Check for Engine Updates) says what is newer without downloading anything, and turns the install button into Update Engines when there is something.

• A style you made or edited is never overwritten.

• The person's model and ONNX Runtime are shared with the Blender add-on's install: one Engine Folder serves both.

• Installation now says exactly how to lay out the folder: rename the unzipped Maya_MotionForge-<version> folder to MotionForge, so MotionForge.mod sits directly inside the folder on MAYA_MODULE_PATH.

• The package now carries these release notes and the guide's pictures.

• The person's model (about 380 MB) is NVIDIA's and stays under NVIDIA's licence; Install Engines fetches it with its licence into the Engine Folder.

• maya_mmd_tools is a separate download under its own licence; MotionForge does not ship it.