Sorry for this being my first post here. I hope it will be interpreted as a polite invitation and not spam.
Here is some background.
For the last year and a small group of people have been extending the (half-baked) Xtranormal State animation system, which runs on top of Ogre. This project has gone under the banner of "State Plus". At first this entailed nothing but editing the XML config files that State uses. However, we figured out how to decrypt their asset files (known as APE or GEO.APE files). These in turn are also XML-based, with Base64 elements, which we've gotten close to completely reverse-engineering.
We have reached a point where we have a pretty open asset input stream. In other words, we can convert models from outside for use as sets and props within State. We don't know enough about the bone-influence and morph targets to work with the characters yet. So their customization is limited to swapping modular bodyparts and retexturing, although a few of them we have in FBX format and have been able to edit in Maya (XN is careless and has pushed out stuff in FBX).
We are also aware of the connection-points between State and Ogre. State features some editable shader files which, if edited, might extend the renderer. (For instance, spotlights are not fully functional.) We don't have enough knowledge about shaders to do this, however. We have also identified several texture mapping types within the Ape but are not familiar enough with them to make use of them. We can run some tests but everything is still new to us.
Rather than fumbling around in the dark, we would like to invite someone from the Ogre community to join us.
This is not a paid gig. It's something you might want to do purely for fun.
I, personally, have been hacking away at this to support my own individual animation efforts, as the existing assets of Xtranormal were too limited. The first finished product using the State Plus enhancements will be something called Fem Trekz, which is my Star Trek fan show, and a spinoff show featuring Klingons.
If you want to see what's been done to transform Xtranormal's characters, here is the "final wardrobe" of the crew.
We're now trying to port over mods from old games and have managed to bring in bridges from Bridge Commander and props from Elite Force. We're struggling trying to bring over the map data from Elite Force. The day-to-day progress along these lines is being documented on our facebook page.
I have had to wear many hats on this project. State Plus is a series of C# applications that run side-by-side with State. It's been extremely draining working on this project and I've actually gone so far as to quit my dayjob and start burning through my dot com nestegg in order to focus on this fulltime in the hopes that I can establish some sort of viable demo reel and make it as a freelance animator or sell one of these shows. (Obviously I can not directly profit from Fem Trekz itself. I'm cutting my teeth on it.)
I am an unschooled programmer. I spent 13 years in the dot com space doing mostly Cold Fusion. I've learned everything on the job because I don't have a comp sci degree. I have a film degree. I have certain spheres of knowledge (like relational databases and XML/HTML) but the 3D stuff is still new to me as I last worked with CG back in the late 90s with Lightwave, before it even supported UV mapping. So the work I've done has been very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, and I'd much rather be dragging characters onto the stage and animating anyway. I have brought State Plus very far along but it's based on very large XML files as a sort of flat-file database and it's starting to buckle under the strain. The next step up, in acknowledgement of the now-infinite nature of asset imports, is an embedded database to manage what is online and what is offline. So on that basis alone I could easily be overwhelmed, and again, I'm supposed to animate, not just build tools. So as you can see, I am at the absolute limit of my skills and available bandwidth, and that's why I'm reaching out here for assistance. I got into this because, well, it's REALLY FUN (even when I have my characters doing nothing but self-reflexively commenting on the progress of the show) and I really want to keep it fun. Getting into the bowels of Ogre shaders is not really my expertise, and it keeps dragging me further and further away from actually animating, and so we really need someone to fill a more technical role and run in parallel with other goings-on. The satisfaction would come in unlocking a lot of extra functionality for State, which is now abandonware as XN has moved on with its (decidedly beta) Xtranormal Desktop (based on Unity).
By moving on they've pretty much left this thing behind as a free machinima tool. It will never become more than a tiny little clique, but I think it's capable of some great stuff otherwise I wouldn't be hunkering down with it. I'd be moving to XD, Moviestorm, or IClone instead. I can go into more detail if you PM me or contact me off of Facebook. I'm hoping to hear from you soon. Thanks for your time.