Opening maya files created with 6.5 with maya 5 problem

[neuromancer1978]

Because the fact that Maya files are not backwards compatible (pisses me off), there really is no way to fix it. There are certain 'hacks' that if saved in ASCII format you can go in and change the Maya version to 5 for example. BUT however if your file has nodes that are linked to newer specific versions then it honestly would take forever to go in and hand edit yor file so you can read it in 5. I have tried this many times, and each time it fails. I think the only way you can do this hack is to delete every node that exists aside from the geometry itself, this includes the shading nodes, rigging nodes, texture nodes.... you get the idea. But even then it might not work. And if your 6.5 file is not just geometry that you need to work with then you are pretty much stuck. Give it a try, but be warned it does not always work.

[dmaas]

If it's an ASCII (.ma) file, open it in a text editor, look for a line near the very top that says something like "requires version x.y," and change it to 5.0. As neuromancer says, this doesn't always work, particularly if the scene makes use of features that were not present in the earlier Maya version (but what do you expect in that case anyway? Maya 5 is not psychic enough to magically have all the features of Maya 7 :) ).

I believe it should be possible to do the same thing with a .mb file, but you'd have to use a hex editor.

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