The first version of the Milkshape3D exporter is now in CVS. This version will happily export static mesh data from Milkshape, and provides lots more options for getting models into OGRE. I’m now starting work on the bones & animation.
Whilst you can export Material data from Milkshape I advise against it since Milkshape supports only very basic materials; OGRE has far more advanced materials. What you can do is to define a ‘working’ material in Milkshape and give it the same name as an OGRE material you define in a .material script. You can use the Milkshape version while skinning but when you export the model you don’t export the the Milkshape material definitions (the material names will still be attached to the mesh). At runtime OGRE will link the names in the mesh to the superior scripted versions of the Materials.
The exporter writes ‘.mesh’ files which is the new OGRE model format (I have deprecated the ‘.oof’ format, it still works but it is recommended that you convert your models). The underlying converter is a class called MeshSerializer, which you can actually use yourself to read/write Mesh objects if you want. For example, if you have an .oof file but you don’t have the original .3ds, you can load the .oof in OGRE and use the MeshSerializer to write it out as a .mesh.
Hope that helps, more exporters will follow soon.