hi,
I have a model comprised of polygons and nurbs.
I want to bring it into houdini, apply shaders and animate it. What's the best way of doing it?
Do I just import it from one file? Or should I break it into parts and import them separately?
Thanks.

You should be able to just export the model as an .obj file and Houdini will import it.

Whatever the names of your various nodes in the Maya Outliner are, Houdini should recognize as groups.

.obj files don't support NURBS, you probably need to convert it to polygons first if you want to do it all in one .obj file. I would recommend using FBX instead. Make sure that you're using the FBX 2009 exporter from Maya.

Does FBX 2009 support Nurbs and names from the Maya Outliner? Thanks.

Yes, FBX supports both NURBS and Outliner names (which, as far as I know, are just regular Maya object names). Just as a note, though, right now “_geo” will be appended to the object names, but I'm looking at removing this.

Just as a note, the latter has been changed as of 9.5.261, and the names of all objects will be fully preserved on import.