New to Ogre - Specific Exporter Need

[jedirock]

Hey, I'm fairly new to OGRE, but our University is using it for an application we're extending. The application itself has already been made in OGRE 1.2.5 and we're exporting new meshes from Maya 2009 to work with that version. Does anyone know how I can go about getting the export code to work with both Maya 2009 AND export out an Ogre 1.2.5 .mesh file?

I've been looking around for quite some time, and it appears that the maya exporter source code that came with 1.2.5 was Maya 6.0, and drastic changes have been made in the past 4 versions of Maya (understandably). I can get an exporter running on Maya 2009, but it exports out meshes for the latest ogre version, which causes ogre 1.2.5 to crash.

I can't thank you for your help enough, this has been a major headache on our side!

[haffax]

I believe there weren't any major changes to the XML mesh format in between the two versions. So one way to go about this is to export to new mesh format with latest Maya exporter, then use the Ogre 1.6 XmlConverter tool to convert binary mesh to XML, then use the Ogre 1.2 XmlConverter to convert the XML back to Ogre 1.2 binary format.
With a simple batch file this process can be automatized.

[Evak]

we have a xml batcher EXE for 1.6 that you can create a shortcut to.

http://www.flow3d.org/tools/FlogreXMLBatcher.zip

You can use the shortcut on your desktop or quicklaunch, drop a single xml file from any location onto the shortcut and confirm dialog will pop up asking if you want to convert all xml files in the folder. If you choose ok all the files will be batch converted to ogre 1.6 binary meshes. It also converts the other way but only individual .mesh files to XML

Seems to work for flow users that only have exporters and converters that output xml.

[jedirock]

This XML export sounds like a suitable solution, but would it also support skeletons and animations as well? Forgive me if this is immediately obvious, as I said, I'm just getting used to this software.

[haffax]

XML format has the same features as far as modeling is concerned as the binary format. So yes, animation and skeletons are supported too.

[jedirock]

So that resolution seems to work in most cases, however I'm now getting a runtime error in the files when trying to convert from XML format (from the 1.6 binary) to 1.2.3 binary format. This error only occurs when I have selected to export blend shapes in the 1.6 binary exporter. Does anyone have any idea what might cause this? (My guess is the use of poses) And does anyone know of any possible solutions or workarounds?

Thanks again! You guys have been really helpful so far!

[jedirock]

Okay, looks like I found the issue. The xmlconverter from 1.2.3 looked for an index on a pose with target="mesh" even though it shouldn't. This bug wasn't found until much later, https://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=32031 . I'll look for the source for this old version of the converter, maybe I can make this small change in the old version.