After researching possible approaches to getting skeleton/mesh data into OGRE as part of the skeletal animation support, I’ve decided to change my approach of writing direct file converters for model formats. Instead I intend to write direct exporters for various modelling programs. I originally rejected this approach because it requires that you own a modelling tool to convert data. However, converting animation and skeleton data direct from files is not easy, especially as not many modellers expose their binary file formats (this has caused me problems with 3ds in the past because they don’t publish much info about .3ds, and now I want to use skeletal data it’s even harder).
Because I don’t want to assume people own 3D Studio / Maya / Softimage, my priority will be to provide exporters for Milkshape3D and CharacterFX (both shareware products and therefore affordable). After this I may write 3DS & Maya exporters depending on demand.
So right now I’m writing a generic exporter framework which I’ll use for all the exporters and getting started on the Milkshape exporter.