Maya Settings for Source Engine

Maya Preferences

Go Top Menu > Window > preferences\Settings > Categories > Settings.


  • The ”’Up Axis”’ in Source engine is the Z axis
  • The Unit system in Source engine is based on the Inch system ( 1 Unit = 1 inch )
  • Game usually use a frame rate ratio of 30 frames by seconds (NTSC) 60 FPS is a HD Frame Rate settings

Set Project

As we have extracted the workSpace.mel f ile on the root directory of our Mod_source.

We will be able to set tell to maya to work on that specific location.


On the Maya top menu, File > Project > Set.


Choose the directory where your mod_source is located.

Just select the folder, and click on Set


When you will Open a Scene from the maya menu, the browser will always be opened on the /modelsrc/ directory. Do not forget to save your scenes files, into the Scenes Folder, and not into /Modelsrc/. The /modelsrc/ must to lie with the /scenes/ folders, mean by that, the two folder must have the exact same hierarchy. Maya scene will be save in Scenes and and the SMD and QC files will be exported in the /modelsrc/ directory.

Setup the Grid

Source engine is based on Inch measure system, and personnaly i prefer to have a grid that fit with the metric system.

A. Go Top Menu > Windows > preferences\Settings > Categories > Settings and be sure that Inchs is the default value of Working Unit system.

Now we got a model to properly scale, but the grid is by default very small. The default the unit system is set to centimeter and the grid option are set on 1 line by unit, This mean that each square as a side of 1 centimeter.

To properly scale your model we have to adjust the Grid Settings before.

B. Go Top Menu > Display > Grid > and Click on the box, to open the setting panel


Here we want to have a grid line of 10*10 Meters.


Inches to Meters  
1 meter 10 meters
39.3700 inches 393.70 inches

C. What we want is a Grid line every 1 meter , so enter 39.37 inch D. If you want to divide 1 meter by 4 or by 10, you can add a subdivision

  • Four subdivisions = one line every 25 centimeters
  • Ten subdivisions = one line every 10 centimeters

E. You can change the color of the subdivisions