Well, you have to delete ALL history first. And yes it recognizes phong, it doesn't recognize blinn. Arneoog is working on using Indigo Diffuse, Indigo Phong, Indigo Specular... etc... instead of Maya materials.

And- leave it overnight and it still didn't work- it crashed

I'm doing some research on how to make the MEL into C++, that would be waaaay faster.

-Matt