The Game Artist's Guide to Maya

Brian Reynolds

Hey there, since Polycount is where I first saw the information about this book I figure this is a good place to ask a question about it.

I just got the book delivered from Amazon yesterday but have found that none of the Maya files that came on the cd are working for me. I'm assuming at this point the reason is that I'm running Maya 5 and these files will only work with Maya 6 (full version or PLE).

If these files are supposed to be openable from Maya 5 could somebody comment on what I need to do to make it happen?

Thanks!

Richard Kain

Nope, sorry. 3D format files for major applications are rarely backward compatible. I do remember you mentioning in a previous post that you were focusing on low-poly modeling for games at the moment. You can always install the latest edition of Maya PLE to take advantage of these example files. You don't have to uninstall Maya 5, just install them both on the same machine. Be warned though, Maya PLE files can't be opened in Maya 5. (or 6 for that matter) But I do believe there is an exporter available for the PLE that will get your models into UT2K4 format.

NoSeRider

Wait a minute, wait a minute....WAIT A MINUTE!!

You can access Maya 5 files from Maya 6 and vise versa if the Maya files are saved in ASCII format! It requires editing the ASCII file in a text software like notepad.

I'll give you an example, if you have ASCII files.

Brian Reynolds

Hm. Well, can't argue with the logic, though I don't enjoy HAVING to use Maya 6 PLE when I've already got Maya 5 working fine. I guess it's not a big deal since I'll only be using up time and hard drive space to install 6 PLE.

NoSeRider, I'm unfamiliar with using ASCII files. Can you explain? The files from the cd are all in standard (albeit version 6 apparently) Maya .mb format.

NoSeRider

The files have to have the *.ma extension when saved in Maya.

You'll have to find Maya 6 and convert them to ASCII....then bring them home and edit them with notepad to be accessable for Maya 5.

Brian Reynolds

Alright. I haven't installed 6 PLE yet but I'll get on that. Once a file is saved as a .ma format how do you go about converting it to ASCII?

Converting it is probably more trouble than it's worth though... at least after getting 6 installed in the first place.

NoSeRider

[ QUOTE ]
I'm assuming at this point the reason is that I'm running Maya 5 and these files will only work with Maya 6 (full version or PLE).

[/ QUOTE ]

Can't use PLE, has to be full version of Maya.

When you open the ASCII file with Wordpad or some text editor, this what it looks like:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>//Maya ASCII 6.0 scene
//Name: polyship2.ma
//Last modified: Mon, Nov 22, 2004 06:56:41 PM
requires maya "6.0";
currentUnit -l centimeter -a degree -t film;
fileInfo "application" "maya";
fileInfo "product" "Maya Unlimited 6.0";
fileInfo "version" "6.0";
fileInfo "cutIdentifier" "200404121241-618620";
fileInfo "osv" "Linux 2.4.21-4.EL #1 Fri Oct 3 18:13:58 EDT 2003 i686";
createNode transform -s -n "persp";</pre><hr />

This is what you want it to look like when you delete the code to make it compatible with other versions of Maya:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>//Maya ASCII 6.0 scene
//Name: polyship3.ma
//Last modified: Mon, Nov 22, 2004 06:58:50 PM

createNode transform -s -n "persp";</pre><hr />

Maya will say there's an error, just press 'OK' and ignore it. Model will show.

Pay Attention!

mtmckinley

As the author of said book, seems like a reply might be good.

Unfortunately, I just didn't think to save the files as .ma format... do'h! They are Maya 6 .mb files and cannot be opened on earlier versions. However, full-version Maya 6 files ARE openable on the provided Maya 6 PLE... but not vice versa. At least, that's what Alias tells me. I hope you enjoy the book.

Brian Reynolds

Well, not a problem really now that the conversion has been explained. Thanks!

Yes, I'm very pleased with the book! It's covering material that I've already been familiar with (consider me still a student but beyond the beginner phase) but the good bit is that it's going into alternative procedures that I either a) wasn't familiar with, or b) covers a procedure in such a way as to shed additional light on *WHY* you do things a certain way. Too often I've encountered tutorials that just say "do this and this and this" without giving me a background of why this technique is useful or perhaps the only way to go.

I do have a question to ask however since one of the procedures used in the book seems to contradict some information that I've been told about game character modelling. I'll follow that up in a different post.