Importing .ma file to Unity. Maya couldn't convert the .mb file to an .fbx file

[Anonymous]

Hi!

I'm trying to update a super old unity project to Unity 2017.1 where I have these old .ma files, but every time I try to import these files I get the error message "Maya couldn't convert the .mb file to an .fbx file after a timeout of 3 minutes." I've recently installed Maya 2018 on my PC and it works fine to open up the files in there. Is Unity or Maya mistaking the files for the wrong file types?

Whenever I try to reimport the files Unity freezes for some minutes and then the error pops up again. I'm pretty new to Maya so I have no clue how to solve this problem. Do I need a specific version of Maya?

[sean.heasley · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

In general the best practice going from Maya to Unity is exporting your meshes as fbx. Have you tried doing this because it should work?

Let me know if you need any more information!

Please hit the Accept as Solution button if my post fully solves your issue, or reply with additional details if the problem persists.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[mspeer · Accepted solution]

Hi!

Maybe there is a problem in your scene or Maya 2018 is not already supported for Unity.

To export as FBX is the first step you should try.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous just checking in, are you still having this issue?

[Anonymous]

Hi! Sorry for the late reply.

I should probably just convert my meshes directly to .fbx files as you mentioned. The reason I wanted to have them re-imported as .ma files is that if I export the meshes to new .fbx files, the meshes I've linked as references to different scripts will break. I've wanted to avoid this but it is probably for the best to convert them to .fbx as you said.

[sean.heasley]

That is probably the best course of action but feel free to let me know if it works or if the issue still occurs 🙂

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

I'm just checking in again to see if you need more help with this. Did the suggestion I provided work for you?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[Anonymous]

Your solution worked. But it also worked by loading the .ma in Maya 2018 and then exporting them as .ma files again for some reason. Thanks for the help! 

[mspeer]

Hi!

This is maybe because of a change in the Maya-file-system (espacially how Maya handles time) introduced during Maya 2017 update 3 to Maya 2018 which only affects saving as .mb and not as .ma .