Proper tutorial on how to import a SFM rig into Maya? (Blease help!)

[dystopian madman]

Hello hello!

I've been trying to find a proper tutorial on how to decompile and import a SFM rig into maya for the longest while now. I consider myself a pretty well off animator and I wanna start playing around with all the rigs and models that are only available in SFM! I've seen people say that you need to decompile a model and do all this random stuf before importing it into Maya, or that you need maya 2013 32bit to have it work properly. Its all so confusing and out of place!

Pretty much was hoping to see if anyone here knows of a good tutorial on how to actually get a sfm rig into a 2016 version of Maya?(Since downloading anything befor 2015 is impossible at this moment). Or, if you'd be so kind as to write a tutorial here yourself? Hell, i'll even pay someone like $10 if they can teach/help me out with this!

Thank you!

[Pte Jack]

look up mesa for maya, and that;s about as fae as I can help. I use Blender

[TruBlu0014]

A rig is a .py file, correct? So Google how to import a .py file into Maya. Or better yet, just use Google. ^__^

[Pte Jack]

Not this time Tru, I think maya is a little out of your league right now.

Mesa is like the equivalent of Blend Source Tools for Blender. It is a Maya plug in for working Valve SMDs. I'm not sure if it does DMX files or not. Like I said, I don't use Maya.

[Marco Skoll]

Although Maya does support Python (or a variant of it), it won't support the SFM specific commands that are used by rig scripts.

You'll have to do any IK rigging of the models manually, although the upside to that is that any dedicated modelling program like Maya does have much more powerful tools for the job than SFM does.

[dystopian madman]

I think I can handle the rigging, shouldn't be too hard. The whole problem is trying to figure out how to get the models from SFM into Maya, since all the googled tutorials I've found are either outdated or just don't work, you know?

[Pte Jack]

To go from SFM to Maya, you use the Crowbar decompiler to decompile the valve model into SMDs. These are the modelable source files for the model. Using the Mesa Plugin for Maya, you import them into maya and edit them. Then you export the edited SMDs from Maya using the Mesa pluginand recompile using Crowbar.

[aytimothy]

Originally posted by TruBlu0014:

A rig is a .py file, correct? So Google how to import a .py file into Maya. Or better yet, just use Google. ^__^

No, a rig is an armature. "Rig scripts" in Source are for modifying the bone structure to turn the 'bones' into actual bones, and sometimes also adding Inverse Kinematics (the need to not have to point bones towards where you want and have the software do that for you).

[dystopian madman]

Originally posted by Pte Jack:

To go from SFM to Maya, you use the Crowbar decompiler to decompile the valve model into SMDs. These are the modelable source files for the model. Using the Mesa Plugin for Maya, you import them into maya and edit them. Then you export the edited SMDs from Maya using the Mesa pluginand recompile using Crowbar.

Alright, so I did just that and downloaded Mesa, properly installed and everything. I've decompiled a Hanzo from Overwatch SFM model and it gave me around a total of 20 items.

https://gyazo.com/9333e529ec30f0b78a17fe72805b8d43

Which one am I suppose to open exactly? I can't seem to find out if I can open them all as a sequence, each time I use the "import as refence" tab button on Mesa, it simply only allows for one piece to be added in, which takes nearly 20minutes to complete and clutters the scene with far too many bones. Am I suppose to open up a specific SMD file, or is there an option on Crowbar that basically merges them all into a single mesh?

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by Faiz al-Jihadi:

Which one am I suppose to open exactly?

All the SMD files (the meshes) and the VTA file (the vertex animation). Source models are very often built out of many sub-meshes, organised into "body groups".

Crowbar won't merge them, because they're not supposed to be merged. For Source, you'd want to keep them all separate because of engine limitations, and you're very often not supposed to use them all at once anyway. (For example, if a model has two different hair styles, you wouldn't want to use them both at the same time, and it'd be a mess to merge them).

I can't seem to find out if I can open them all as a sequence, each time I use the "import as refence" tab button on Mesa, it simply only allows for one piece to be added in, which takes nearly 20minutes to complete and clutters the scene with far too many bones.

Most of us don't use Maya, so we can't comment.

I know that Blender's tools will allow you to load the QC file, which will then load all the parts referenced in that file, but I have no idea what Maya will do.

[Pte Jack]

If there is an option to import a QC file, use that and point to the model's qc and select it.

If you were asking about Blender, the help would be much better. Infact, what you might do, is grab Blender and Blender Source Tools. Import the models QC, kill off the LODs then export a FBX and import that into Maya.