Show in Contents

Add to Favorites

Home: Autodesk Maya Online Help

 

Supported file formats

File management

Open recently saved files

 

User Guide > General > Basics > File management > 

Create, open, or save a scene file

To start a new, blank scene file

1. Select File > New Scene.

You can select to always create new scenes with default content by choosing File > New Scene > and turning on Enable Default Scene.

To open an existing scene file

1. Select File > Open Scene.

   The Open dialog box appears, open in the scene folder of the current project.

   Note

   • You can open a file that is created in a later version, provided the Ignore version setting is turned on.

   Maya files of later version types that are opened in an earlier version of Maya are not supported as feature compatibility to earlier software versions cannot be ensured. The Ignore version feature is primarily provided for users in production environments where multiple versions of Maya are in use simultaneously.

   • If you run Maya using a license for Maya Complete then open a scene that contains nodes that are restricted by licensing to Maya Unlimited, you may see warnings of the form:

   // Warning: file: …/30Sectest.ma line 63: Unrecognized node type 'something'; preserving node information during this session. //

   These warnings can be safely ignored. All information in the Maya Unlimited nodes will be properly imported into Maya Complete and written out again correctly when the scene is saved.

   If these licensed nodes came from an Unlimited plug-in (for instance, Maya Fur), when the scene is written out again by Maya Complete, the scene file forgets that it needs Maya Fur to load properly.

   A workaround is to load the Maya Fur plug-in manually in Maya Unlimited before loading the scene file.

To save the current scene file

1. Do one of the following:
   • To save the scene with its current name, select File > Save Scene.
   • To save the scene with a new name, select File > Save Scene As.
   • To change how Maya saves the scene, select File > Save Scene > and set the options.

When you use Save Scene As you can select whether to save the file as Maya Binary (smaller) or Maya ASCII (human readable). To save in a different format, use File > Export All.

You can optionally lock a file to prevent the file from being edited whenever it is referenced from other scene files using the Lock file option.