Max 2008 back to Max9

TSM

So, I'm testing out Max 2008 and I saved some of my work in it.

After I got sick of all the bugs in it I went back to max 9 and tried to open my work, but it won't open (I guess the .max files changed in the upgrade). I've been playing with exporting the meshes but it seems like too much work since I have quite a few meshes I need to get back to max 9.

Any short cuts? or the best export format?

Eric Chadwick

BFF is an older exporter, it was made for converting Max5 files into previous versions. But it's made using Maxscript, which hasn't changed much, so it might still be the best supporter of Max entities.
http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/darkmoon/bff/

FBX is another possibility, supports a lot of entity types. Make sure to get the latest.

If only mesh, this OBJ importer/exporter is probably the best bet.
http://www.guruware.at/main/index.html

Ctrl+Awesome

Newer versions of max files won't open in previous versions (usually) so the best way to get aroud that is to export as .obj. Before you do so you may want to take the time to make sure your nurms or mesh/turbosmooth and any other sub-div modifiers are off, reset your x-forms and if it's only a single object your exporting, set its coordinates to 0,0,0 as sometimes imported .obj files can have the object set flying off to god knows where in space.

For the .obj options box that pops up before things are saved, you generally want to export grouped by object, turn on Rotate Model, select Quads in the faces pulldown menu, turn on tex coord, norms, smooth groups, set vertex scale to 1.0 and set # of digits to 6. I leave the rest unchecked.

MoP

FBX is probably a good bet, if the BFF scripts don't get it all.