Maya binary to maya ascii

[cire]

hi! Is there a way to convert an .mb file to an .ma file without going through the GUI? Like maybe via maya's commandline. Or is there a utilitiy out there that can do this.

[deke-kincaid]

Maya can be launched in nongui mode in a shell by typing "maya -prompt". Then all you have to do is know the proper mel commands to open and save the file.

[cire]

tnx but i dont think it would work since im gonna include in a script. So i need something that i can run in batch mode.

[deke-kincaid]

Why can't you run that in a batch. Just write a shell script that starts maya in a prompt and executes a mel script that has batch commands to convert files.

[cire]

how do you execute a mel script from a maya prompt inside a shell script?

[cire]

ok dont bother i've already figured it out. tnx!

[deke-kincaid]

Did you find the "maya -batch" command? I got it mixed up with -prompt since it is probably what you wanted. Also another usefull thing, if you use a mac, applescript can directly call mel commands. Hopefully they add this funtionality to something like python in the future.

[cire]

well i've figured out a way to use maya -prompt in linux by redirecting its input to a file which contains all the mel commands i need to run. Like this:

maya -prompt < test.mel

However i cant make it work in windows. I tried using maya -batch like above but nothing's happening. there is nothing in the documentation about the batch commandline option. How do you use it?

[deke-kincaid]

From the left hand panel of the online manuals(Maya 6):
Using Maya > General > Basics > Interface Overview > Start Maya from the commandline
All the info you need is in there.

[cire]

ok found it! thanks a lot! )