MayaMeshTools is an open-source plugin to import single mesh files and sequences of mesh files in Maya. Currently the plugin can import the file formats OBJ, PLY and MZD. However, it should be easy to extend the plugin.
This plugin can be used to import and render the rigid body data generated by our fluid simulation library:
Author: Jan Bender, License: MIT
- an open-source Maya plugin to import mesh data
- adds a node to Maya which enables the import of mesh animation sequences
This project is based on CMake. To build the plugin, the Maya devkit must be installed. If you tell CMake which Maya version you are using by setting the CMake variable MAYA_VERSION, CMake will search for the Maya headers and libraries in the usual Maya directories. CMake generates project files, Makefiles, etc. and then you can compile the project with a compiler of your choice that supports C++11.
The code was tested with the following configurations:
- Windows 10 64-bit, CMake 3.18.3, Visual Studio 2019
- Debian 9 64-bit, CMake 3.12.3, GCC 6.3.0.
Just load the plugin using the Plug-in Manager of Maya.
Note: The plugin needs the scripts directory. So if you copy the plugin, also copy the scripts folder.
After loading the plugin a new menu appears which is called "Mesh Tools". It allows you to create a MeshLoader node. This node reads mesh data from a file or a sequence of files and generates a Maya mesh that can be rendered.
The MeshLoader node has three attributes:
- Active: activates/deactivates the mesh loader
- Mesh File: path to a mesh file, if you want to load a sequence of files use # as placeholder for the frame index, e.g. example_###.obj will be mapped to example_001.obj.
- Frame Index: index of the current frame, by default an expression is used to get the frame index which can be adapted if required