[Answer: Use Octopus] Max 7 Exporter Problems

Hi Folks,

Life's funny isn't it? The things you think are going to be a snap turn out to be real mongrels, and the things you think are a challenge turn out simple.

I managed to make a boned series of animations on a Max 7 model in just a few minutes following the doc that came with the exporter. In the 1.19 Ogre Exporter, I chose the mesh, I added the list of animations (eg. Idle, BankLeft, BankRight etc, along with the start/end frame numbers), took a deep breath and clicked "Export".

The Maxscript failed with the following MaxScript Error message:

--Type Error: Call needs function or class, got: $Bone:Bone01 @ [...vector...]

There are other OGRE users that have reported similar issues with Max exporting, but none seem to have found the answers (I've trawled the Content Creators Forum for *hours*).

***One thread referred to a bona-fide Plugin DLL that was in dev by Lioric ...has it been made available yet, and if so how do I obtain same?? ***

This may be stating the obvious, but if we can't get models into OGRE then it ...ummmm... kinda renders (!) it useless, which would be a shame because I think it's incredibly good.

Kindest regards,

Greg H. Ps/ I'd be happy to email the Max model to anyone that thinks they can help...it's a seagull that may fly in OGRE one day !!!

You should probably post this somewhere on the Main OGRE forum, since this one is used by the OgreDotNet people (people using OGRE under the .NET environment).

Thanks Kentamanos,

I am a DotNet programmer, and I regard this Forum as "Home", so I didn't think to post it on the Main Forum. Also I note that one requires registration in both forums...I couldn't even pm an author on the Main Forum without registering there (seperate memberships).

Your friendly advice is well taken...do you have an answer to my question?

Kindest regards,

Greg H.

...and for what it's worth, because you responded to my post, apparently I cannot delete it...so I guess we've both made an error. It still doesn't answer my original question though.

Kindest regards,

Greg H.

Sorry, I'm an XSI user

It's worth asking/searching on the "main" forum since it gets a lot more traffic. I don't really know all of the details, but I know a lot of people in Max currently use the "Octopus" exporter from the "Yake" group. They're located at http://www.yake.org.

Thankyou Kentamanos,

I will research YAKE as you have suggested...and by the way, I've been to Dallas...have friends there...

Kindest regards,

Greg H.

I think it's kinda cool that you find this to be your "home forum" because you're using ODN. I don't think we should discourage asking questions that aren't directly related to ODN, since we are more of a ".NET community" here than an ODN community. After all, .NET is the one thing we all have in common, and some of the problems we encounter may be due to using .NET even if they're not all related to using ODN itself.

Building communities is always a good thing.

Thank you for the supporting response...this forum is the only thing standing between me and a total 3D abyss. I have tried using "raw Directx" and found it to be overwhelming...even Microsoft's "Empty Project" to say hello world takes 4.5mb - and all you get is a blank rendering surface. The effort to make an interactive environment is mind boggling...and most of the code examples out there aren't written in VB.Net, so you have to translate them before you can use them.

The fact is that I'm burnt out, and OGRE looks like an easier prospect as it wraps the nuts and bolts into something immediately useful. Well, that's how I saw it until I hit the wall with getting models out of Max. Oh..and that's a nothing thing - I'm actually a reasonable 3D modeller as well as programmer (ie: I don't distinguish them apart) so hence the accidental posting in this forum.

All of this aside, I'm going to try the YAKE Octopus thing, and if that fails I'll join the crowd awaiting the "beryllium orange magenta" (boy was that post pushing the friendship) plugin by Lioric.

Once again, thanks for the support. This place is becoming more like home every day.

Kindest regards,

Greg H. PS/ The reason for all of this is I'll be teaching on a Diploma soon...so who knows what resources the students may provide...

Well hey, if you do modeling too, I could use you for my project. If you don't have a specific project in mind for yourself that is.

Hi All,

Well, I installed the YAKE Octopus Exporter for Max (7.0) and it worked perfectly ...my seagull, complete with several animation sequences is now under the complete control of my OGRE app (pity I forgot the "PoopOnHead" sequence - I guess particles are my next challenge.

A couple of observations that may be useful - Octopus appears to split the geometry into a .mesh file and the bones/animation into a .skeleton file. If the two are put in the same folder the crowd cheers...if not you get a flacid seagull that couldn't care if a fried chip was dropped. That's flacid!!!

The previous OGRE Exporter 1.19 combined both sets of data into one .mesh file (which I think is more convenient). Another thing is that I think either exporter would have worked had I not used mirrored bones (well hell, a bird is symmetrical so why wouldn't you?) That is, both exporters *appear* to choke on mirrored bones.

Also...Octopus exports the materials (textures) correctly in that it uses underscores to replace spaces for material names in the material file...1.19 leaves the spaces and OGRE gives you default models with white texturing and white highlights and white. Good for bird poop, but not the actual bird.

Having gained control of the bird, my next project is to manage *all* scene objects via a VB.Net collection - one that creates the entities and nodes automatically (hopefully via a scene script), labels them, tracks position, rotation and scale, allows group assignment for batch processing using internal methods like Shake, Die, FlyRandom...but I will save this for another thread when I have refined (my already working concept app).

Once again, thanks for the support.

Kindest regards,

Greg H. PS/ Hey EagleEye...what kind of meshes did you have in mind?

PPS/ Could someone *please* answer my topic on manipulating a Terrain mesh after it has been constructed in OGRE...it's very important.