Maya animation import

Hi all,

I have a rigged, animated character in Maya that I'm using as a test for importing Maya animations in Unity.

I moved the animation_test.mb file into my Unity\projects\assets\character directory, under the assumption I can import the file in Unity using the inspector.

Mind you I'm still learning Unity- but from my understanding I can click the "Apply" button in the inspector & the animation_test.mb will be converted to an FBX file with the mesh & skeleton intact.

Problem is i get this error:

 Maya couldn't convert the mb file to an fbx file! It reached timeout of 3 minutes.
 UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

When I was playing around with importing FBXs in Unity, I found out my Maya FBX plug-in was out of date. I've since upgraded it & have had no issues importing static meshes into my project.

I'm running Windows7 64 & set Unity to run as administrator hoping it would solve my problem but it didn't.

What I'd like to sort out is importing animation into my project using best practices. I would appreciate all advice.

Thanks in advance