Important Note

The objective of that Guide, is about to make the user strictly follow the instructions. because most of users that reports issues when they start using MESA after the installation.” %}

The guide cover :

This is the reason why you had to strictly follow the guide from the beginning until the end.

Quick Steps:

I resume the important steps to make it works. The installation and the project settings, are two distinct tutorials. You must to follow the instructions of the both tutorials in order for MESA to work with maya and with the Source Engine.

  1. Download and extract MESA on the Hard Drive.
  2. Set the environment variables that Maya requires to found the location of MESA, and the shelf icons. ( "MESA/config/mesa_config.bat")
  3. Install the shelf ( run “MESA/config/Mesa_shelf_install.bat" )

VERY IMPORTANT !
You MUST TO USE the PROJECTs WORKSPACEs provided with MESA installation ( Projects workspaces are localized into MESA/projects/ directory). At that moment of the installation, if you open Maya, the MESA’s shelf should appears with all the icons and the scripts should be sourced properly.
But the Path Tab on the MESA main panel, should reported you some missing and invalid settings. If it happens, quit Maya, and you must for setup the Project environment paths first. You cannot to export your scene to the source engine game of your choice at that moment of the installation.

So we assume that you are using the Projects Workspace provided with MESA and that are localized into MESA/projects/ directory.

The BAT files are already setup for you, and can be executed without to edit the paths inside the files.

  • Set the Project Environment Paths (run a batch file from MESA/projects/GAME_PROJECT/. Example : run as administrator this batch file : MESA/projects/mod_2013_SP/Source_2013_SP.bat.

It’s very important to run the project batch file because it will set the proper paths required to find the valve executable tools that MESA absolutely needs to convert TGA file into VTF, and compile the SMD and QC into a MDL file.

The Batches files must to be launched with Run as administrator, We do prefer to set permanently the environment variables(SETX) , and do not use the simple (SET) method that would force us to launch Maya when you run the batch.

In the case of your STEAM install directory, in localized on one drive, and the game you want to create some assets, is localized on a STEAM library drive. You must to edit the MESA_config.bat and set the path to the STEAM library, not the Steam install directory.

Note for advanced users :
Once you know exactly how MESA, Maya and SourceEngine like the sources assets to be organized before to be compiled/converted, you could create your own projects workspace that match the name of your mod project.

Keep that tutorial opened, and now we will detail the installation into two articles, to make it more simple.



  1. MESA Setup
  2. Project Setup
  3. How the resource must to be structured