I am wriiting a tool to render maya files on many computers over a network. The problem is that I need a way to determine what external files a particular scene will require in order for it to be rendered (textures, etc.). I have succeeded in parsing ascii files for this information, but I still can not parse binary files. Is there a tool that does this already, or is there someone out there who has information on how to parse Maya binary files? A simple program that listed all externally referenced files for a given maya file would be perfect.
Jus tout of curiousity .. what are you programming this with? Is this something that will be commercially available or is it proprietary..or even better shareware;-)
---a note from our sponsor---Have you tried searching highend3d?
www.gmask.com
I'm writing it as a stand alone application in C++. It will eventually become a maya rendering interface for the Condor batch system (www.cs.wisc.edu/condor).
--Colin
Interesting... again I ask why you are writing it? Fun or for Profit
The binaries will be freely available (as is all of Condor) once completed.
maybe try this command... (from a shell, or dos-prompt)
maya -archive [filename]
this should return file dependecies (textures etc) and plugins for either .ma or .mb's
