Feature Request: .x-files

[DarkDragon]

Could it be that too many people have problems converting animated models, just as I have?

I never had any problems with the blender exporter, except when it comes to armatures: there you'd better work with quaternions instead of euler angles. But then it works. The very old milkshape exporter even has some LOD options, but you can't export vertex weights with it.

[Thade]

Could it be that too many people have problems converting animated models, just as I have?

I never had any problems with the blender exporter, except when it comes to armatures: there you'd better work with quaternions instead of euler angles. But then it works. The very old milkshape exporter even has some LOD options, but you can't export vertex weights with it.

I have Blender, Milkshape, Ultimate Unwrap, Hexagon 2, Daz Studio 4, Fragmotion, Bryce 7, DeleD - for most counts if they import x they don't export Ogre - if they export Ogre they cannot import x and putting a 3rd format in between messes the whole thing completly up ... and if they can do both they produce a faulty Ogre XML in 95 % of all tries ...
.x is in our experience the most reliable format - it works in every low cost engine which supports it errorfree - some need a rootframe, some not - some need spltted frames, some not - some need all animations in one line and you have to extract them - some want them splitted in the x -file ... x can handle it - and every user can handle it as easy as it sounds ...
And the most usable for this needs is Fragmotion - We (2 developers) have learned to make Animations with it - and when we export them to x or any other format and then use them in any other engine they work. 100% with no try and error ...
With Ogre und PB they do not - so we have the choice - drop PB and Ogre or try to make the Animations work ...

That thread has reached the 3rd page - If there were only 20 people telling: I put my x-files into "this", export them as XML and the Ogreconverter makes problemfree working animations ... 100 % no try and error.
All I read is ... send me your models and I may find a solution ... Well - Good animated Models cost money - you don't just gift them away ...

I admit - there are obviously too many different parameters to consider. The Quaternion system produces the same results even if all 4 values in different formats are different because the 3 xyzvalues are related to the w value - so an animation key in x looks different to an animation key in Blitz3D and different to an Ogre Key although they do tum the arm or leg the same angles.
Adding the translation keys also in different scemes and considering scaling whithout changing the vertices direct, but scale global with variables in the root must lead to a mess which is not easy to solve if the converter is not programmed to consider all aspects ...
But that's actually where the Ogre Guys had to come in. If they build their own system they must take care that it is usable without going through years consuming research ...
Providing converters that produce rubbish in most cases is not a testimonial for their system ...

This thread shows me so far that Ogre Animations seem not to be very popular and are not widely used
And a feature request "Import x-files" - because it is reliable and integrated in DirectX is not so wrong I guess
If the developers think about it or just say no to such a thing - we'll see ... some decisions take their time and are related to a success or nonsuccess of a present solution ...

I can only repeat myself - PB 3D has developed unbelievable - the complete language is outstanding - if 3D flops because of a non-usable animation system for the essential in 3d gaming, animated models, it would be a shame ...

RR

[Olby]

This thread shows me so far that Ogre Animations seem not to be very popular and are not widely used
And a feature request "Import x-files" - because it is reliable and integrated in DirectX is not so wrong I guess
If the developers think about it or just say no to such a thing - we'll see ... some decisions take their time and are related to a success or nonsuccess of a present solution ...

It's other way round. So far you have done nothing to help us to solve your issues and as far as I can tell most people have had better experience with their models. If you don't want to share the files that's fine, but don't expect us to help you out at the same time. This doesn't sound like a proper feature request either, more like a "well I can't work this out, please implement feature X to make it work for me".

[Fred]

To be clear, it won't be a native .x importer for OGRE, so either you let us to help with your problems, or you find the solution yourself (ie: use another engine). Just saying it does work on some other engine is no help and won't make PB/OGRE better. Yes, it reaches 3 pages and you are still repeating the same useless things accross all the topic. As I said, there is nothing wrong with the OGRE mesh format, many commercial games successfully use it. Sorry to be harsh, but it's getting nowhere.

[Thade]

Well, I took a closer look into the NeoAxis SDK (based on Ogre) yesterday ...

With their resource editor you can import x 3ds dae about 20 other formats besides mesh and skeleton ... and what I didn't know before - the discussion in that thread and my more intensive research made me find out - so for me it was a highly win situation - they export these files excellent to mesh and skeleton ... so this problem is solved for me by coincidence

Now, why have they done that? Obviously because they noticed they do not get far without other formats and without a working in-engine conversion to Ogre ...
Maybe some customers started a feature request ... and they took that advice into their todo list ... because they want to help their customers not wasting their time with bad tools ... and use their worthful time for programming and rigging models and not wasting it with unsuccessful converting ...

Nothing more was my feature request ... no affront ... no order to react how some of the members here did ... just an idea to think about ...
If I start a thread in a forum its after long experience, practice and thoughts ... and in most cases in the end it came out to be useful ...

RR

[Olby]

Mate, you're just not getting it are you? There's nothing wrong with suggesting features that are good to have, you never know some of them might eventually end up in PB. But what you're doing here is far from a feature request.

If every person who has used OGRE in PB complained about .mesh format, believe me, it would've been a top priority on Fred's or Comtoi's to-do list to create an .x or .b3d or any other model file importer. Apparently there is no demand in such formats for now. If we could gather a few dozen people who have had some issues then, you're right it might be on feature request list soon. But for now, only you seem to have issues with it.

[Fred]

To sum up, you have to download the neoaxis SDK, use the resource editor to convert to .mesh and it is ok ? It will probably help other people which needs to convert their assets.

[Nubcake]

I don't really like using the .mesh format for models ; you can hardly find anything you want that's in that format anywhere. Does an .obj to .mesh converter exist?

[blueznl]

Oh for heaven's sake! I've read through all these three pages and PLEASE SUBMIT THE BLOODY FILES THAT WORK AND SOME THAT DON'T. And as publicly as possible. And then, AFTER people had their chance to fool around with them, THEN start bitchin' or whatever.

(I want to apologize right now, I'm not even deep into 3D, but this was getting annoying. My apologies up front for my tone and choice of words. Still, someone had to say it, better be me than somebody that's taken seriously.)

[Fred]

On a side note, you should also report the export bugs to the software which don't export OGRE correctly (if they advertise it indeed), they have to fix that as well. That would be good for everyone.

[Samsonite]

Hello everybody,

I downloaded the PureBasic 5.00 Demo, re-saved the ninja model using Unwrap3D,
and loaded it into the 3D demo project called Entity.pb. It looks correct to me.
Animation plays well too.



Unwrap3D exports OGRE XML files, so I used the OgreXMLConverter.exe from OgreCommandLineTools 1.7.2
to convert it to a OGRE mesh.

Since the original poster has not provided their dinosaur model for us to look at,
I can only assume the problem is either pilot error or an issue with their model.

If you want someone to look at your model, just ask.