Blender > Ogre - exporting models with armature problems

[rjrl101]

Hello all,

I'm having trouble exporting models with armature from Blender to Ogre. The OgreExport script runs without error but as far as I can gather, produces too many files. I get:

model.mesh.xml
armature.mesh.xml
armature-armature.skeleton.xml
model.material

From what I can gather on this forum (a series of posts concerning a fish iirc), I should only have one .mesh.xml file, not two. The result being in Ogre that I can either have a boneless chicken or a fleshless skeleton depending on whether I assign model.mesh or armature.mesh to my entity. Indeed, the bones appear to work too.

Does this problem ring any bells? I haven't seen it mentioned on here but I'm hoping someone knows what I'm doing wrong!

I will post my procedure for making my model and armature if the brief description above doesn't already point to an embarrassing and easily identifiable error on my part! Just ask if you need more detail on what I've done in blender.

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Also, are there any basic guidelines or procedures that one should follow for making Ogre compatible models with armature in Blender? I'm not at all interested in learning about animation, keyframes, inverse kinematics - I've found loads of tutorials on how to to really fancy hand and body animation in Blender alone and I get lost in them trying to find the simple facts I do need...

What I am trying to accomplish is to add a bone structure to a sailing ship in Blender and get that model and skeleton into Ogre. There will be no animations - precise bone rotations are to be set by another part of our code I am not responsible for. I do not have a problem with getting and manipulating bones in our program.

The bones are (mostly) required to move small distinct parts of the model independently and without deformation. i.e. when I rotate the rudder bone, I do not want the sail yard bones to rotate and I want the rudder to keep its shape. The large majority of vertices in the model (i.e. the hull and masts) do not need to be affected by any bone at all.

Now this is where some confusion lies. I seem to need a disparate collection of independently acting bones, none necessarily physically linked and most, if not all, to be children on a null bone which is not to be moved. As I am unsure about whether this is allowed, so I kept all the bones physically linked in my failed attempt yesterday and maintained a proper "family tree" for the armature. So while this is not the source of my problem, I do need to know if it is allowed. Is dotted parenting, which I believe what I need is called, fully supported yet?

Finally, I also saw a recommendation while searching yesterday that bone names are best made four letters long or less. Is this still true? (Although given my current frustration with Blender, the bone names may end up being four letter words anyway!)

I think I've asked too much now, but thank you very much for any help you can offer,

Richard L

[reimpell]

The OgreExport script runs without error but as far as I can gather, produces too many files.

If you select the armature (e.g. in addition to the mesh), the script exports an animated debug mesh of that armature, too. If you only select the animated mesh before running the export script, you will get the mesh, skeleton and material files you need.

[reimpell]

What I am trying to accomplish is to add a bone structure to a sailing ship in Blender and get that model and skeleton into Ogre. There will be no animations -

I haven't tried to export skeletons only. In doubt, add a dummy action with a single keyframe.

Is dotted parenting, which I believe what I need is called, fully supported yet?

Yes. Also, Ogre no longer requires a single root bone, so you don't have to link the bones.

Finally, I also saw a recommendation while searching yesterday that bone names are best made four letters long or less.

This is no longer required for the script to work, since Blender's Python interface improved. However, Blender truncates your names to four letters in some cases anyway.

[Harlequin]

I have succesfully exported a mesh which just a skeleton from blender. No actions involved, as far as I can remember.

[rjrl101]

Thank you both for your help, I've now managed to get the mesh with the desired skeleton into our project. In the end it was a couple of errors I was making in Blender that were the cause of my problem but your comments were very helpful in clarifying what I could do in Blender and still produce an Ogre-compatible model.


thanks again,
Richard L