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Maya MCP

Maya MCP is a local MCP server for controlling Autodesk Maya through Maya's commandPort.

It is designed for practical AI-assisted Maya work:

  • run the MCP server outside Maya
  • keep Maya communication on localhost
  • expose typed tools instead of raw Maya APIs
  • keep read-only and mutating actions easy to reason about
  • support safer unsaved-scene confirmation flows when the client can elicit forms

Start Here

If you just want it working:

  1. Read Getting Started
  2. Add it to your client with Client Setup
  3. Skim Tool Guide so you know what is available

If you are changing the project:

What You Get

Maya MCP currently exposes 71 tools across these families:

Family Count Typical use
health 1 Check whether Maya is reachable
maya 2 Manually connect or disconnect the transport
scene 9 Open, save, import, export, undo, redo
nodes 7 List, create, rename, parent, duplicate, inspect
attributes 2 Read and write attributes
selection 6 Manage object and component selections
connections 5 Inspect and edit DG connections
mesh 3 Inspect topology and vertex data
viewport 1 Capture screenshots from Maya
modeling 15 Common polygon modeling actions
shading 3 Create and assign materials
skin 6 Bind, inspect, and edit skin weights
animation 6 Timeline and keyframe workflows
curve 2 Inspect NURBS curves
script 3 Discover and run approved scripts, with opt-in raw execution

For scene replacement operations, scene.new and scene.open still refuse by default when the current scene has unsaved changes. Clients that advertise MCP form elicitation can receive an in-band discard-changes confirmation instead of having to retry explicitly with force=true.

Five-Minute Setup

  1. Install maya-mcp
pip install maya-mcp
  1. Open Maya commandPort
import maya.cmds as cmds

try:
    cmds.commandPort(name=":7001", close=True)
except RuntimeError:
    pass

cmds.commandPort(
    name=":7001",
    sourceType="python",
    echoOutput=True,
    noreturn=False,
    bufferSize=16384,
)
  1. Start the server
maya-mcp
  1. Add it to your MCP client

Use the examples in Client Setup.

  1. Call health.check

If that succeeds, try scene.info or nodes.list.

Guardrails

These are the rules that shape the whole project:

  • The MCP server process does not import maya.cmds.
  • Maya communication stays on localhost only.
  • script.run is disabled unless MAYA_MCP_ENABLE_RAW_EXECUTION=true.
  • Large results use limits, truncation, or pagination where needed.
  • Exact tool schemas are exposed through MCP tools/list metadata.

Documentation Map