Ogre Forums

Hi !

Ryzom's assets got released some time ago and offer a great set assets which all work well together. While the assets art created in 3dsmax format and there are multiple 3dsmax exporters for Ogre out there, the conversion is still a bit troublesome.

For one, the materials are defined by special nel 3dsmax plugins and not standard 3dsmax materials. So, at least my exporter had trouble exporting those. I played around a bit with the nel plugins and the included scripts and managed to create one that converts the nel material definition to a somewhat similar 3dsmax material definition which in turn can be exported to ogre (or maybe to something else as well).

There is also the problem with definition of the animations. Each animation has its own max file. So those have to get merged somehow. I'm not sure what would be the best option to tackle this. Merging on exporting might work but if you wanted to change something that might get tricky. Afaik 3dsmax doesn't support multiple animations in one file so I'm not sure what to do here.

Ideally, I'ld have a solution that converts all those assets to something usable in ogre and without the nel dependency.

Anyways, you can get the current version of the material converter maxscript as well as some of my converted meshes here: http://www.transmogrifier.de/ryzomtoogre/

Here is a video of 3 converted models in OgreMeshy:

[youtube]NsPkvB2IKOI[/youtube]

Note that the ryzom assets are modelled with z-up while ogre's tools usually have y-up. That's why the camera angle is a bit odd and the grid which is supposed to be the ground plane stands up. One could easily rotate the models either in 3dsmax or the ogre meshes afterwards. Personally I prefer z-up as well so I just kept the original ryzom axis orientation.

The issue of created automated pipelines is always an interesting one to tackle.

My knowledge of 3DMax is very limited since I use Blender for creating my Ogre meshes, but maybe you also have the option of making y point upwards when exporting. (the Blender exporter has this option). I believe it is easiest to work with models in Ogre if they have +y pointing upwards.
I would also recommend not rotating your models in 3D MAX, because there Z is up. Look for means of (pseudo) automatically swapping Y and Z axis, either in the exporter or by post processing your Ogre meshes afterwards.

You could use Ogre's MeshMagick to rotate all your models. Since it's a commandline tool you could write a script that does it automatically for all your meshes.
Maybe OgreAssimp might also be useful to you.

As I said, I prefer z-up. But yes, if you prefer y-up you can easily convert the models using MeshMagick

IMO, choosing a non-standard z-up is a bad move.
Option?
Defaulting to y up?