Hello there. I have been using Maya for over 8 years and have created hundreds of art pieces with it. Characters, environments, and more.
I really, really don’t want to have to remake everything from scratch to convert to Blender.
I’ve seen Blender’s capabilities and the fact that so many other freelance artists use it makes me want to use it, too. Especially when it makes everything look so easy in the tutorials I’ve seen.
Is there a way to import fully rigged Maya files to Blender? Is there a plugin that allows you to import Maya files to Blender the exact way they are in Maya?
I’m sorry to ask this, but I have done a crazy amount of work in Maya over the years, and I really don’t want to have to start over every single thing from scratch to convert to Blender.
My website and YouTube animations should give you an idea of how much work I’ve done in Maya over the years.
For the most part, rigs are incompatible between software. The only exception would be game compatible rigs that are only bones, blend shapes, and skin weights. If you use anything that is application specific such as bendy bones in Blender, or a custom deformer in Maya, then you’ll have to rebuild those.
If you need to re-rig for animation, I highly recommend BlenRig as it is the easiest to set up for multiple character types. We used it for Raya and Clovis on a team of animators that came over from Maya previously, and I believe there was a version used at Blender Institute for one of their short films.
There is a dedicated thread for BlenRig and then there is a video by David Andrade about getting used to Blender from Maya.
