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MAD: Maya ASCII Downconverter

Phil Strahl — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:32:53 +0000

Today I was somewhat grouchy: I wanted to continue my works from the day before on my notebook but couldn’t open the Maya 8.5 ASCII files in Maya 8.0 on my ACER portable. I was so annoyed by that fact that I started to code a little application that turns any Maya ASCII-file into a Maya 8.0 compatible ASCII.

After two hours I had the core working and this afternoon I tweaked here and there, did a little debugging and now it’s final in it’s first raw version: MAD – The Maya ASCII-file down-converter:

Usage

Note: If you’re using some features that aren’t possible in Maya 8.0 there’s a chance of still not being able to open the file in Maya 8.0. Most likely these files will open with a bunch of error-messages, but at least they open after all.

Just download (below) it an double click it. A file requester window appears and asks you for a Maya ASCII file (.ma). Select the one that you want to convert and click open. It’s as simple as that — and makes life a little easier.

MAD won’t harm your precious ASCII-scenes , it will create a new version with the suffix “_downconverted” in the same directory. MAD opens your original file as read-only because I wanted to make it as safe as possible. If there remains a hidden file called “temp.ma” in your source directory, you can delete it, it’s only used by MAC to be on the safe side.

Version History

M.A.D. 1.0.0.0 (2007/11/23)

Initial release

Donation & Download

The application is donation ware. So if you want to say a little “thanks” by donating money that would be really nice. Thank in advance!

	Click the Image to download the MAD 1.0.0.0 converter

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Austria License.

So tell me what you think and post any bugs you stumble across. Thanks!

I Give Up…

Phil Strahl — Mon, 28 May 2007 08:08:22 +0000

…trying to write my own WordPress PlugIn that opens a DivX Webplayer window. I was so close… But coding HTML in JS that is nested in PHP is a little too much for me today… you’ll have to wait if you’re wanna read and see about my graphics card problem… i gotta get some sleep.

Making a Pass at DiFi

Phil Strahl — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 04:41:08 +0000

While reading Sherry Turkle‘s “Life on Screen” I was fascinated by the chatterbot Julia she describes early in the book. I rose the challenge of coding a simple chatter bot myself in PureBasic, a language I am quite famliar with. For three days now I am working in a bricolage process on the code and its functions, (procedures in PureBasic), and it’s working – a little – but I am patient and add line by line to the code on a daily basis.

Right now I am not certain about Difi’s personality or even its gender. Difi stands for Digital Fidelity and hence is pretty open to interpretation. And I am playing with the thought of making a German version of it, connecting it to the Ö3 chat and just have fun reading the log-files…

Difi even has a function for making “accurate” typos when in competitive mode. “Accurate” means, that Difi hits the correct neighboring keys on the keyboard instead (or additionally) to the right ones. If Difi gets sleepier, he/she/it will make more and more typos.

if you click this post’s thumbnail you’ll see a picture of Difi’s source code for answering a “what’s up” question.