How to retarget animations without mecanim

I need to work with some legacy animations because the scripts im using need them as dependancies and Mecanim cant use legacy anims..

What was the process of retargeting animations to a different rig/mesh before Mecanim came around?

So far it seems the workflow is to load the original fbx into a 3d program (maya in my case), change the mesh, tweak the animations, use the original rig and reimport into Unity.

Does this workflow sound correct or am I going about this wrong?