My student Maya can't open files created at school...

[Chanzee6]

I'm having problems to open maya files created at school. At school we have Maya 2014 comercial version for Ubuntu and at home I have the 2013 student versión for mac OS 10.6.8 and windows XP, and when I try to open a mb file it says // Error: line 0: Error reading file.

Is it because they are different versions? Should I upgrade to the 2014 version? I'm worry because of the capacity of my computer.

Thank you so much in advance.

[rimcrazy]

The simplest answer is to upgrade to version 2014 at home.  In general there is no reason to save your file as a .mb.  Save it as a .ma.  In addition, on your home version which is currently 2013 go to the Windows-> Settings/Preferences -> Preference menu and bring up Preferences.  Once you have this open go to Settings -> Files/Projects.  Close to the bottom of this dialog box is a checkbox to Ignore version.  Make sure that this is checked.  See the attached screenshot.

I teach Maya at our local Community College.  I see this issue often with students.  Usually, by simply always saving your file as an .ma and setting ingore version you can pretty much go between one version of Maya and another as long as they are not seperated too much in version, ie, 2011 <-> 2012,   2013<-> 2014.  If you have used a specific feature that exists in one version and not the other, and it is in your history and you have not deleted your history for your objects, you will most likely have issues.  Just tonight I edited a file for a student at home using 2015 and we have 2014 at school.  I saved the file as a .ma.  The student did what I detailed above and, while Maya complained, it actually opened the file fine and everything was correct.  Your milage may vary.  As I said first on, the best way is to get the same version.  As a student you may download 2014 although you might have a bit of an issue as the Student Site may already upgraded to 2015.  If so if you conatct Autodesk there may be a way to get the 2014 version.

[Chanzee6]

Thank you for your answer!!

When I save the file as .ma Maya says

"File contains unknown nodes or data. To preserve this information, the current file type cannot be changed."

I think it's because I'm using Morpheus rig, however a .ma file is created, hope I won't have problems.

I tried to do the windows-> settings thing and let's see what happens when I get home.

Thank you again for your advice!

[rimcrazy]

I was not familiar with a Morpheus rig but I found it with a quick Google search.  Off the top of my head I would not see why you could not save a file with this as a .ma.  That being said, this is a fairly complicated object, one in fact that to my previous note, may not transport well between versions. 

A note on the "Ingnore Version" setting.  This actually does nothing when you save a file.  This is to tell Maya to ignore the version setting found in the file header of a maya scene file when opening a file.  It does not do anything to a scene file, reading or writing, it simply tells maya to try to open the file and not reject it simply because the version of the file is different than the version of the application.

Given what you want to work with, your Morpheus rig, your best bet is still to get the same version at home as at school.

[ezzatunhazwanie]

My friend has installed maya almost two times but still can't open it? He used maya 2016 how is that?