Maya Exporting Problem

Suddenly, I clicked "Export All" and it only gave me 3 options:
1) .ma
2) .mb
3) .mov

I'm using Maya 8.5 and I want to export to .u3d (Ultimate Unwrap3D Pro).
I have the right program, the translation file is in the right place, but it won't give me the option to export as .u3d (in fact, it won't even let me export to any of the other formats that Maya supports by default).

How do I fix this?

Have you activated the u3d plugin? You have to activate it after you install it.

open maya, go to the windows menu, then go to the setting/preference option, then go to plugin manager

Thanks, it's working now.
For some reason, it decided to "uncheck" the load box in the plugin manager.

yeah i had mental ray do that,very annoying. i totally freaked out. haha

It's a shame that Blitz can't recognize .mb or .ma in the first place.

yeah no kidding, its been a pain trying to get my maya projects to work in blitz.

No game engine can load .mb files directly, any more than they can load .max files from 3ds max. There are sound technical reasons why this is the case, but long story short it's because you want the files streamlined to just what the game engine needs, not loaded down with extraneous crap like you'd get from those proprietary file formats.

Now that Maya supports using Python for scripting, I was thinking of writing a .b3d exporter for Maya. I mean, years ago I tried to write a b3d exporter in MEL, but that proved to be unworkable, but doing it in Python should be much better. Thing is, I'm kind of in the midst of turning my attention away from Blitz (after I'm done with my current project I'll probably use other tools for all future projects) so I don't know if I'll bother writing a b3d exporter.

Still, even if/when I stop using Blitz3D, writing a .b3d exporter would be a fun project and good practice...



For what it's worth, note that the situation now is much better than it used to be (like, say, back when I was trying to write a .b3d exporter in MEL.) The UU exporter for Maya didn't exist yet, so I was forced to use .x for animated characters and obj for static geometry.