Opening Maya projects from a newer version in older versions.
16thJan. × ’10
By Eric B
Often times I find that clients or co-workers are using older versions of Maya software which can create a headache at time of delivery. Here’s a quick tip to “downgrade” the Maya scene file.
For example: I have a Maya 2009 project that needs to work in Maya 2008. It uses nCloth which was available in 2008 so we are golden there.
Save the Maya 2009 scene file as a .MA (Maya Ascii file format)
Open it in any text editor and make sure it’s in plain text format.
Find the lines of code that reference the Maya version number like this:
//Maya ASCII 2009 scene
//Name: name of maya scene.ma
//Last modified: Sat, Jan 16, 2010 1:12:40 PM
//Codeset: UTF-8
requires maya "2009";
And simply comment out the lines at the beginning of the file by adding two slashes “//”:
//Maya ASCII 2009 scene
//Name: name of maya scene.ma
//Last modified: Sat, Jan 16, 2010 1:12:40 PM
//Codeset: UTF-8
//requires maya "2009";
There is a new method since the Maya 2008 release (I think that’s when they started this). If you click on File > Open Scene > Option Box, you’ll see a little checkbox to “ignore version“. Much easier this way.
NOTE: If you are using nodes that are exclusive to a new release, this will not work or at least the exclusive nodes will not import. That will require a little trial and error.
Opening Maya projects from a newer version in older versions.
Often times I find that clients or co-workers are using older versions of Maya software which can create a headache at time of delivery. Here’s a quick tip to “downgrade” the Maya scene file.
For example: I have a Maya 2009 project that needs to work in Maya 2008. It uses nCloth which was available in 2008 so we are golden there.
There is a new method since the Maya 2008 release (I think that’s when they started this). If you click on File > Open Scene > Option Box, you’ll see a little checkbox to “ignore version“. Much easier this way.
NOTE: If you are using nodes that are exclusive to a new release, this will not work or at least the exclusive nodes will not import. That will require a little trial and error.