Creating .gr2 outside of dcc?

Anyone know of a reasonable way to create a gr2 outside of DCC? I’m fed up not having an intermediate format and want to export to XML (Collada, or even custom if needed), then run a process to convert to granny.

Unfortunately I haven’t used granny in years, so my knowledge is foggy. If I remember correctly the *.gr2 is a binary file and the only way we were able to generate those binary files was with the Maya plug-in.

We were looking for a way to go from .fbx to .gr2 at the time and we ended up hacking a process to open maya behind the scenes, load the fbx and export the .gr2. Wasn’t pretty, but got the job done.