Platform

mayatk

Maya 2025+ tech-art toolkit built on maya.cmds + maya.api.OpenMaya (no PyMEL) — modeling, animation, materials, rigging, and scene-pipeline automation, plus tool panels and one-click bridges into Marmoset, Substance Painter, RizomUV, Blender, and Unity.

mayatk is the Maya layer of the pythontk → uitk → mayatk → tentacle ecosystem: a library of composable helpers first, with a fleet of uitk-based tool panels (Shot Sequencer, Channels, Scene Exporter, …) built on top of it.

Installation

pip install mayatk

Requirements: Maya 2025+ (Python 3.11+).

mayatk also ships mayapy-package-manager.bat — an interactive Windows menu for installing/updating/backing up packages in Maya's bundled Python interpreter.

Packages

Package	What it covers
`anim_utils`	Animation curves, shots, blendshape animation, playblast, smart bake
`audio_utils`	Audio clips, ffmpeg-backed conversion, timeline-keyed events
`cam_utils`	Camera utilities and default-camera handling
`core_utils`	`CoreUtils`, `Components`, `AutoInstancer`, MASH bridge, diagnostics, preview
`display_utils`	Visibility & isolation, color ID, exploded view
`edit_utils`	`Selection`, naming, primitives, snap, bevel, bridge, mirror, duplicate (linear/radial/grid), mesh graph
`env_utils`	`MayaConnection`, workspace, namespace sandbox, references, hierarchy sync, FBX/USD, scene exporter, Blender + Unity bridges, WebXR preview
`light_utils`	Lightmap baker, HDR manager, lights-from-geometry
`mat_utils`	`GameShader`, `RenderEffects` (per-object `opacity` / `highlight` channels; `RenderOpacity` is its deprecated alias, warning until 0.20.0), `ImageToPlane`, `MatUpdater`, shader templates, emissive groups, Marmoset + Substance bridges
`node_utils`	`NodeUtils`, `Attributes`, Channels tool, shared scene data nodes
`nurbs_utils`	NURBS surfaces, `ImageTracer`, curve-to-tube
`render_utils`	Renderer switching and render-settings helpers (composed by `hdr_manager`)
`rig_utils`	`Controls`, skinning, tube / wheel / telescope / shadow / articulated rigs
`ui_utils`	`MayaUiHandler`, channel box, native menus, hotkey collision check, node icons
`uv_utils`	UV utilities, Rizom bridge
`xform_utils`	Transforms, matrices, pivot watcher

Classes — and, for the wildcard-scanned *_utils roots, their public methods — are exposed at the package root via the lazy-loading resolver. Both bare and class-qualified forms work:

import mayatk as mtk

@mtk.undoable                           # bare form — wildcard-exposed
def operation():
    mtk.freeze_transforms("pCube1")

# Class-qualified form — explicit, no risk of collision
mtk.NodeUtils.is_group("group1")
mtk.XformUtils.freeze_transforms("pCube1")
mtk.EnvUtils.SCENE_UNIT_VALUES

sel = mtk.Selection()

For the full public surface (auto-generated, refreshed each release) see API_REGISTRY.md.

Design notes: Shadow Rig — a source-responsive rig type (the Rig: combo's planned Morphing entry: options weighed, a recommendation, the maintainer's decisions).

Tour

A curated subset — the packages table is the map; these are the standouts.

Auto-instancing

Convert geometrically identical meshes to instances. Duplicates are matched by geometry signature, so rotated and scaled copies are found regardless of transform or name:

import mayatk as mtk

mtk.AutoInstancer(tolerance=0.001, require_same_material=True).run()

Drive Maya from outside

MayaConnection launches and remote-controls Maya from any Python process — the backbone of mayatk's own test suite:

from mayatk import MayaConnection

conn = MayaConnection.get_instance()
conn.connect()                      # launches a fresh Maya on a free port
conn.execute("import maya.cmds as cmds; cmds.polySphere()")   # runs in that Maya, not yours

By default every connect() gets a new instance — an artist's open session is never touched (see Session safety below).

Smart bake

Analyzes what is actually driven — constraints, set-driven keys, expressions, IK — and bakes only those channels, onto an override layer, with a persisted manifest that makes the bake reversible even after save/reopen:

result = mtk.SmartBake(optimize_keys=True).execute()
mtk.SmartBake.restore()             # undo the bake — drivers resume

Scene audit

mtk.SceneAnalyzer.run_audit(adaptive=True)                  # print the report
html = mtk.SceneAnalyzer.format_audit_html(scope="all")    # {section: html}
# → scene overview, rendered vs unique triangles (every instance counted),
#   draw calls, per-material texture cost (GPU estimate), a ranked Fix First
#   list, top contributors, missing textures, leftover UV snapshots

The report behind tentacle's Get Scene Info. Sections render through pythontk's ReportDoc -- HTML tables for a viewer, the same content as text for the console -- and blendertk's SceneAnalyzer produces the same report from a Blender scene.

DCC bridges

One-click hand-offs that export the selection and drive the target app with a templated script: Marmoset Toolbag (including a bundled JSON-RPC plugin for live Toolbag scene ops), Substance 3D Painter, RizomUV, Blender, and Unity. Built on pythontk's HandoffBridge engine (RizomUV uses its own script-driven flow); each ships as a tool panel.

WebXrPreview is the same engine aimed at a browser instead of an application: mtk.WebXrPreview().push() converts the selection to glTF and publishes it to a loopback server, so a tab left open — including one open in a PC-tethered headset — swaps to the new version on its next poll. Baked lightmaps and the scene sidecar ride along automatically. See Live WebXR preview (pythontk owns the shared pipeline).

More highlights

Preview — hermetic operation preview: tools show live results, roll back on cancel, replay on commit.
Components — component islands, border edges, edge paths, normal-angle edge selection.
ExplodedView — force-based exploded view (vectorized repulsion), toggleable and reversible.
NamespaceSandbox — import files into disposable namespaces for analysis or object swapping, with guaranteed cleanup.
HierarchySync — diff a working scene against a reference and repair it: create stubs, quarantine extras, fix fuzzy renames and reparents.
TubeRig / WheelRig / ShadowRig — rig builders: FK / spline-IK / anchor chains from a mesh centerline, expression-driven wheel rotation, fake contact shadows.
ArticulatedRig — rigid parts on hinge / swivel / ball / slide joints, proposed from the geometry; the skeleton ships with an articulation record so a hand can grab it in Unity and the WebXR preview, solved as the Maya Grab Tool solves it.
ImageTracer — trace images or Blue Pencil strokes into curves and meshes.
DevTools / WidgetInspector — grep Maya's MEL source and globals; walk, snapshot, and diff Maya's live Qt widget tree.
StyleSetter — restyle Maya's scriptable viewport colors to match another DCC.

Bundled UITK Editors

MayaUiHandler ships with a one-line entry point for launching the uitk editor windows from a Maya shelf button or script:

from mayatk.ui_utils.maya_ui_handler import MayaUiHandler
MayaUiHandler.instance().editors.show("browser")

Editor key	Description
`browser`	Searchable launcher for every UI registered with the switchboard — tags, filtering, hide lists, launch options, JSON-portable presets.
`style`	Theme + QSS variable editor for live restyling of the dark/light themes.
`shortcut`	Keyboard-shortcut editor for slots and commands; a focused `global_shortcuts` view also exists. Hosts can wire in Maya-aware collision checking via `mtk.HotkeyCollisions.maya_collision_checker`.

MayaUiHandler.instance() is reentrant: if tentacle (or any other tool) already created the handler, the call returns the existing singleton; otherwise it bootstraps one with a fresh Switchboard. The editor window is cached per-handler — clicking the shelf button twice focuses the existing window rather than spawning a duplicate.

Session safety

MayaConnection.connect() defaults to launch=True, force_new_instance=True — every call launches a fresh Maya on an unused port. The user's open session is never touched. The test runner (test/run_tests.py) defaults the same way; only --reuse overrides, and you should not pass it. See CLAUDE.md for the full rule.

Guides

Shot Sequencer — the per-shot animation timeline: its Standard / Compact / Graph views, the shot, clip and key gestures, the graph editor, keys and header settings (the panel's ? help links here).
Scene data nodes — the shared data_internal / data_export two-node model that every tool uses to stash scene-wide metadata and (optionally) embed it in an FBX.
Shot data in the FBX → Unity — exporting Shots as named Unity AnimationClips plus embedded shot metadata, and side-by-side coexistence with Audio events.
Lightmap Baker — Arnold lighting baked into engine lightmaps: the panel, presets shared with the headless API, the Exclude set, where the maps land, and how the engine binds them.
Articulated Rig — a prop of rigid parts (a lamp, a magnifier arm) rigged from its geometry: the joint types and how they are found, the rig, the articulation record the Unity and WebXR runtimes pose, and grab semantics.
Emissive groups → Unity — runtime-toggleable emissive regions: one all-on emissive map, per-group gating via vertex-color or mask-texture encoding; cross-package SSoT (pythontk region-mask engine, blendertk mirror, unitytk templates).
Live WebXR preview (pythontk) — what WebXrPreview builds and what survives the trip: lightmap carriage through a slot-less format, the SceneState sidecar sections that repair FBX translation loss, normal-map wiring, and the size/GPU-memory budget.

Format specs (co-located with the code that consumes them):

Shot-manifest behavior and mapping files — both formats are defined once, in pythontk's shots engine (BehaviorSpec / MappingSpec under pythontk.core_utils.engines.shots.manifest), which also generates their reference: the Shot Manifest panel writes MAPPING_FORMAT.md into the user mapping folder it opens (MappingSpec.format_markdown(); BehaviorSpec.format_markdown() for behaviors).
Scene-exporter template rules — export-template rule syntax.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Metadata

Release files for mayatk 0.26.0

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