The complete, open-source glTF 2.0 plugin for Autodesk Maya — full materials, rigs, animation, morph targets, material variants and Draco, with nothing locked behind a paywall.
The real problems artists and modders hit when bringing glTF into Maya, and exactly how Maya GLB I/O solves each one.
Toggle between everything the importer reads and everything the exporter writes.
.glb and .gltf (+external .bin), auto-detected. Full node hierarchy, multi-mesh and per-material multi-primitive meshes, UVs (correct V-flip), vertex colors, UV-derived tangents.
Drop-to-floor toggle sits the model on the grid. Bakes leftover root scale (the 0.01 unit node many exporters add) into a clean identity — no junk nodes — and skips rigged meshes safely.
Base color, metallic-roughness, normal, AO, emissive — into your choice of openPBR, StingrayPBS, Arnold or Maya Phong, picked per import.
Transmission / IOR / volume glass, clearcoat, sheen, anisotropy, iridescence and specular — mapped to openPBR layers. Full legacy spec-gloss (uses both diffuse and spec/gloss, no spurious darkening).
KHR_materials_variants becomes a live "Material Variant" dropdown on the imported object — switch looks instantly from the Attribute Editor. Pre-warmed so the first switch is instant.
Joints + skinCluster with fast bulk weights. Skeletal animation → animCurves with euler unrolling and correct fps. Morph targets → Maya blendShapes with animated weights.
Perspective and orthographic cameras (FOV→focal length, clip planes). KHR_lights_punctual directional, point and spot lights → native Maya lights.
KHR_draco_mesh_compression decompresses on import (auto-installs the DracoPy decoder once) — most compressed Sketchfab GLBs that fail elsewhere just open. KHR_mesh_quantization dequantized correctly.
Auto unit conversion (glTF metres → Maya scene units). Never pollutes the scene — auto-flattens Maya's File > Import namespace wrapping.
Write .glb or .gltf (+ external .bin), exporting your current selection or the whole scene.
From openPBR, StingrayPBS, aiStandardSurface, lambert, blinn or phong → glTF metallic-roughness, with textures embedded or referenced.
Node hierarchy and transforms with pivots baked correctly; root nodes carry the world transform.
Joints + inverse-bind matrices + JOINTS_0 / WEIGHTS_0 written so your rig survives the round-trip.
Maya animCurves → glTF samplers, so your animation comes out the other side intact.
Maya blendShapes → glTF morph targets with weights.
An Export Preferences window in the GLB I/O menu, and faithful round-tripping with the importer.
The same capabilities you'd pay for — and a couple you can't get anywhere else. Hover a row to focus it.
| Capability | Typical paid plugin | Maya GLB I/O |
|---|---|---|
| Import meshes / PBR / all shader targets | __CHK__ | __CHK__ |
| Skin + skeletal animation (import) | __CHK__ | __CHK__ |
| Morph targets | __CHK__ | __CHK__ |
| Material variants (live switch) | __CHK__ | __CHK__ in the Attribute Editor |
| Clearcoat / sheen / anisotropy / iridescence / transmission | __CHK__ | __CHK__ |
| Cameras + lights | __CHK__ | __CHK__ |
| Draco + quantization | __CHK__ | __CHK__ |
| Legacy spec-gloss | partial | __CHK__ full |
| Full rig + anim + morph EXPORT | partial / none | __CHK__ |
| Source available | __X__ | __CHK__ MIT |
| Price | paid | free |
Comparison is generic and made in good faith against typical paid Maya GLB plugins; no specific product is named.
Screenshots and GIFs go here. (Owner: capture the clips listed below into docs/assets/ — see assets/README.md.)
No build step, no dependencies to wrangle. Download, point Maya at the plug-in, and a GLB I/O menu appears.
Grab maya-glb-io-vX.Y.Z.zip from the Releases page and unzip it somewhere you'll keep it — e.g. your Maya scripts folder or any project folder.
install.py into MayaStart Maya, then drag install.py from the unzipped folder into the viewport and click OK. (Prefer manual? Plug-in Manager > browse to plug-ins/maya_glb_io.py > tick Loaded.)
A top-level GLB I/O menu appears with Import/Export, plus File > Import works natively. That's it.
Prefer a module install? Drop the included maya_glb_io.mod into your Maya modules folder (edit its first line to point at your unzipped folder). Paste a module path below:
Yes — completely. Maya GLB I/O is MIT-licensed: 100% free, no paywall, no feature gating, no donations required. The full source is on GitHub, and every feature on this page is in the free build.
Autodesk Maya 2022 and newer, including 2024, 2025 and 2026 (anything on Python 3). The parser and writer are pure Python with no heavy dependencies.
Both. It writes .glb and .gltf with materials, node hierarchy, full skinning, animation and morph targets — and round-trips faithfully with the importer. Full rig + animation + morph export is where it's ahead of most tools.
Yes. KHR_draco_mesh_compression is decoded on import — most compressed Sketchfab GLBs that fail in other free tools just open. The first Draco import auto-installs the DracoPy decoder, which needs a one-time internet connection. (A mesh whose skin weights are compressed inside Draco imports as static geometry — rare.)
Advanced layers (clearcoat, sheen, anisotropy, iridescence) render fully in Arnold; Viewport 2.0 shows them only partially — the data is all there, it's a viewport limitation. Imported light intensities are approximate (glTF physical units → Maya) and easy to tweak. Animation is imported/exported as per-frame samples with euler rotation (no glTF curve tangents).
Open an issue on the GitHub issue tracker. Since the source is MIT, pull requests are welcome too. Note: Maya rejects non-ASCII node names, so such nodes are renamed to a safe ASCII name on import.
Rigs, morphs, materials, Draco — all of glTF, both directions, $0.
Want a heads-up on new versions? Get it on Gumroad for update emails, or use Watch → Releases on GitHub.