OpenPose Renderer for Maya

Turns an animated Maya skeleton into OpenPose-style stick-figure images (up to 25 BODY_25 body/foot + 21+21 hand + 70 face = 137 keypoints), for use with ControlNet and similar tools. Built entirely on Maya's Python API 2.0. Targets Maya 2022-2024 (Maya 2022 = Python 3.7, 2023 = Python 3.9, 2024 = Python 3.10; PySide2 -- PySide6 also detected automatically if present).

Body output supports two OpenPose skeleton formats, selectable per character (see Body model below): BODY_25 (25 points, includes MidHip + feet) and COCO (18 points, no MidHip/feet, Neck connects directly to each hip -- OpenPose's original/legacy body model). Both use the exact same joint mapping; switching formats does not require remapping.

Install

Option A -- Maya module (recommended): copy (or symlink) this whole PoseRenderer folder somewhere on disk, then add its parent directory to MAYA_MODULE_PATH (e.g. in Maya.env):

MAYA_MODULE_PATH = C:\path\to\parent\folder

PoseRenderer.mod (at the repo root) handles the rest: it registers the module as PoseRenderer, adds plug-ins/ to MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH and python/ to PYTHONPATH automatically. In Maya: Windows > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager, find openposeRenderer.py, and check Loaded (and Auto load if desired) -- it's now loadable by its short name (cmds.loadPlugin("openposeRenderer")) from anywhere.

Option B -- plug-in path only: skip the module system and add plug-ins/ directly to MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH instead:

MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH = C:\path\to\PoseRenderer\plug-ins

The plugin adds its own python/ folder to sys.path automatically at load time either way (via MFnPlugin.loadPath()), so PYTHONPATH never needs setting by hand for the plugin itself to work -- Option A's PYTHONPATH entry only matters if you want python/openpose_renderer (or the bundled debugpy) importable outside of loading the plugin, e.g. from a shelf script.

Usage

1. Map a character

• Run cmds.openposeCreateCharacter(name="myCharacter") (or use the mapping editor's Create Character button) to create one openposeCharacter node per person you want to output. Scenes with multiple openposeCharacter nodes render as multi-person OpenPose output.
• Open the mapping editor: cmds.openposeShowMappingEditor().
• Select the character node in the dropdown, select a joint in the viewport, click Set from Selected next to the OpenPose_full slot it corresponds to. Repeat for as many of the 137 slots as your rig has joints for -- unmapped slots simply render with zero confidence (no point/limb drawn), matching how OpenPose itself represents undetected keypoints. Face and hand slots are optional; body-only rigs work fine.
• Mappings are plain Maya connections (joint.message -> openposeCharacter.targetJoint[i]), so they save with the scene and survive joint renames/reparenting.

2. Viewport preview

With an openposeCharacter node in the scene, a colored OpenPose-style skeleton overlay is drawn live over the mapped joints in every viewport (toggle per-character via the node's enableDisplay attribute; tune with jointRadiusScale / limbThicknessScale). This is for QA of the mapping, independent of rendering.

Body model (BODY_25 / COCO)

Each openposeCharacter node has a bodyModel enum attribute (BODY_25, the default, or COCO), settable in the mapping editor's Body Model dropdown or directly via cmds.setAttr("myCharacter.bodyModel", 1) (0 = BODY_25, 1 = COCO). It controls both the live viewport overlay and the rendered output for that character:

• BODY_25: all 25 body/foot points -- MidHip, hips/knees/ankles, eyes, ears, and the 6 foot points (heels + big/small toes).
• COCO: the original 18-point OpenPose body model -- no MidHip, no feet, and the neck connects directly to each hip instead of through a pelvis point. Slots you mapped for MidHip/feet are simply not drawn in this mode; nothing needs to be remapped to switch.

Hands and face are unaffected by this setting either way. Rendered from the same mapped HumanIK-named test rig (test/openpose_humanik_test.ma):

BODY_25	COCO

Face source: facial joints, or ARKit 52 blendshapes

Most facial rigs have no joints at all -- they're driven entirely by blendShape targets, often named per Apple's ARKit convention (from an iPhone/TrueDepth mocap pipeline, Live Link Face, or a hand-keyed rig built to match it). Each openposeCharacter has a faceSource enum (mapping editor's Face Source dropdown, or cmds.setAttr("myCharacter.faceSource", 1); 0 = Joints, 1 = ARKitBlendshapes) controlling where its 70 face keypoints come from:

• Joints (default): unchanged from above -- map Face_* slots to facial joints if your rig has them.
• ARKitBlendshapes: the 70 face keypoints are instead computed procedurally from 52 connectable blendshapeWeight[0..51] float slots (in Apple's canonical ARFaceAnchor.BlendShapeLocation order/naming -- eyeBlinkLeft, jawOpen, mouthSmileLeft, etc.). Select your blendShape node (or an ARKit-mocap-driven control) and click Auto-Connect ARKit Blendshapes from Selected in the mapping editor -- it connects every one of the 52 canonical names that exists as an attribute on the selected node. The resulting face is anchored at the character's mapped Body_Nose joint and billboards to always face whichever camera is drawing (viewport or render camera), sized by the faceScale attribute (world units; default 15 -- tune to your scene's unit scale).

Accuracy caveat: there is no published, authoritative "which ARKit weight moves which OpenPose landmark, by how much" table anywhere (unlike BODY_25/COCO, which OpenPose's own source defines exactly). The neutral face template and per-blendshape displacement rules in face_blendshapes.py are a hand-authored, geometrically-reasoned approximation -- each shape nudges only the anatomically obvious nearby landmarks in an intuitive direction. It produces a recognizable, responsive OpenPose-style face suitable for ControlNet conditioning, but is not a biomechanically precise simulation. jawForward and tongueOut have no representable effect on a frontal 2D landmark set and are no-ops.

Rendered from test/openpose_arkit_face_test.ma (a control node with all 52 ARKit-named attributes, auto-connected -- see that scene for the pattern):

Neutral	jawOpen + smile + raised brows

3. Render OpenPose images

• Switch a viewport panel's Renderer menu to OpenPose to make it the active/selectable renderer for that panel (this is the Viewport 2.0 render override integration point).
• To actually generate the OpenPose PNG sequence, run:

  cmds.openposeRenderSequence(
      startFrame=1, endFrame=48,
      camera="renderCam",              # optional; defaults to the active view's camera
      outputDirectory="C:/out/openpose",  # optional; defaults to <workspace>/images/openpose
      showInRenderView=True,
  )
  

  Each frame is projected through the given camera at the scene's render resolution (defaultResolution node), rasterized as a black-background, OpenPose-colored image (limbs under joints, canonical BODY_25 palette, per-finger rainbow hand colors, white face dots), written to disk, and pushed into Maya's Render View so you can watch it render like any other renderer.

Debugging (VS Code)

.vscode/launch.json provides:

• Maya: Attach (debugpy) -- attaches to a running, interactive Maya. debugpy is bundled in python/ (no separate pip install needed -- verified importable under all three target Maya Python versions, 3.7/3.9/3.10). Each session, run scripts/start_debug_server.py inside Maya's Script Editor first (see that file's docstring), then launch this config from VS Code to hit breakpoints anywhere in plug-ins/ or python/openpose_renderer/ -- including the draw override and render override callbacks, which only run inside a real Maya viewport.
• mayapy 2022/2023/2024: Run current file -- runs the file you have open through that Maya version's own mayapy.exe interpreter (with python/ on PYTHONPATH), for headless scripts that call maya.standalone.initialize() themselves. Useful for quick iteration on constants.py/projector.py/rasterizer.py without opening Maya's UI.

Notes / known limitations

• Colors/connectivity: BODY_25 and COCO keypoint layout and limb connectivity are taken verbatim from OpenPose's own POSE_BODY_25_BODY_PART_PAIRS / COCO section of POSE_BODY_PART_PAIRS (src/openpose/pose/poseParameters.cpp). BODY_25's colors are likewise verbatim from POSE_BODY_25_COLORS_RENDER_GPU. COCO limb colors, and all hand/face colors, are generated from an HSV hue wheel (rainbow per limb or finger, white face dots) reproducing OpenPose's own visual scheme rather than a hardcoded transcription of its longer, generated gradient tables.
• Projection does not attempt to replicate Maya's film-gate/overscan/fit reconciliation pixel-for-pixel -- for correct results, set the render camera's film aspect ratio to match the scene's render resolution, as you would for any Maya render.
• The "OpenPose" Renderer-menu entry uses a standard scene/HUD/present Viewport 2.0 operation chain (so switching to it always leaves the panel usable); the actual OpenPose image generation happens via openposeRenderSequence, not via GPU render-target pixel substitution inside the viewport override.