Hello I did a search on loading maya models but I cant seem to find anything on it (strangely enough). However, I did see in a post at flipcode that you have to use mel to export shapes and such because the maya format is not free? Looks like a visist to mayas site is in call Thanks.

Ok, well I downloaded the maya personal learning edition and have been playing with it a bit. The model formats are mb,mp, ma
I believe. Do importers and exporters have to be written with mel (maya embedded language)?

This might be helpfull to you

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1906.asp

An even better article:

http://www.ewertb.com/maya/api/api_a18.html

What I did was write a model exporter that outputs a text file with all the vertex/normal/texture data, then parsed it into my game.

Nitzan

AFAIK, the maya format is the same as 3ds max''s .max format - it doesn''t contain normal data like a model would, but everything you need to create the model - including the plugins and whatnot. Thus you''d have to basically rewrite Maya into your engine to load in native maya files Fortunatley, all you need is a good exporter that will export the model to a format of your choice, and load that in.

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Thanks a lot guys. The links were very helpful!!

If we are already on the topic of loading maya files...

does anyone know how to extract the Maya bone/joint data using the Maya API ?

Thanks,

Nitzan

does 3DS MAX have a free exporter without having to actually buy 3DS??