Skeleton From 2008 To 8.5 - How Do I Do It?
 

Hi guys, I have just registered on this forum as I am having trouble getting a skeleton rig for a character made in 2008 into 8.5 and was hoping someone could help me out. The reason I am doing this is because I am doing a game design project at university and the university computers all have 8.5 on them and I have, up till now, been using 2008 for all my work. When it comes to handing the work in I will need to hand it in as 8.5 files so the tutors can view it.

I am used to using the .obj export function to export meshes so that they can be imported into previous versions but I have tried this on the skeleton and nothing exports. I have tried exporting both the mesh and skeleton together and only the mesh exports.

Can anyone tell me how to get a skeleton and mesh (already binded) from 2008 into 8.5?

there are a few ways to do this. one is exporting using FBX (.obj is for mesh only, no animation or connections).

Another is to save the 2008 as a maya ascii, then open the file in notepad and change any reference to 2008 (there is one Date in the file, make sure not to change that reference of 2008) to 8.5.

Also in version 8.5 and above if you select the options box next to OPEN it has an option to Ignore Version. I have used it and it works fine. Hope that may help.

Woo Hoo! Thanks guys, you are life savers!

Ended up going for oldhippie_tom's method and it worked straight away - all the mesh, skeleton, animation and texture is there. Thanks Kratch as well - would have tried your method if tom's hadn't worked!

I actually tried the FBX export last night but when I imported it the skeleton had distorted majorly and looked like a big ball of cotton wool!

Cant believe it was that easy to do though - I spent ages doing Google searches trying to find out how to do it but found nothing!

Thank God I registered here eh? ;)

I am glad that it worked so well for you. I am more glad that they finally build that feature into Maya.

I find it's still hit and miss. I tried it before I posted and it didn't work for me, hence the old method.

I'm curious what format your file was when bringing it in, Ascii or binary?

It was an .mb file. Thats binary right?

I have used .mb also. And seems to work fine on almost everything. Sorry to hear you are having problems with it.

.mb is binary.
.ma is ascii, which is what I typically use

I'll have to do some test to see if it's the format type that gives the issue