Assuming you''ve got the full version of MAYA =]

Load up a plugin called rtgexport.ml from Window>Settings>Plugin Manager.

Then select file>export selection and choose rtg format.
This only exports polys - quads or tris depending on what you want, but will tesselate any NURBS surfaces for you. It''s not so hot on animation tho. There''s also GE2 format and VRML and DXF.

The point is you can very simply parse these ASCII files (much simpler than MAYA''s native ASCII believe me) into a vertex buffer. And they have quite a lot of options for export.

HOWEVER, you''ll probably want to write an export function in MEL if you love MAYA as much as me (or want true NURBS output)...unfortunately that''s where I''ve got stuck. MAYA doesn''t wanna let me query a lotta things. If you find out how to do this please post it up here as I would love to know.

Hope the inane ramblings helped a bit =]

Hi,

Maya does also provide an Exporter for the old Alias|Wavefront .OBJ-Format. Thats anoter very simple ASCII format, easy to parse and so forth...

As playmesumch00ns already mentioned, reading native Maya files is quite hard. The ASCII-Format uses MEL Extensively. As the Maya documentation says, it is a lot of work to create such an importer, as it has to be able to reproduce nearly all functions of MEL, which is definitely too much work. The binary format isn''t much better, if I remember correctly, I will have a look at that again.

I think writing a customized exporter should be done using the SDK, not using MEL. I''ve tried a bit around with 3D Studio Max, which does not allow too complex operations with its scripting language, and I don''t think MEL will return memory addresses either