Questions: Skeletal howto, normalmapping on skinned?

hello
I'm new to OGRE and oFusion and I have a few questions

I've looked around for tutorials and info about exporting skeletal animations, but so far I've had no luck
how do I export skeletal animations? I made a small test with a ball and two bones skinned so it moved like a blob.
It seemed to export fine but according to my programmer the output was not skeletal animation. I got an .OSM file that has the animation data and also loads the bones, which are .mesh files themselves. then I got a .skeleton file (besides I got my main .mesh file and its .material file, but that has nothing to do with animation. I didn't get any more files in the output)
is this skeletal animation or not? if not how do I export my file as skeletal?

next question is more simple
does OGRE support normal mapping on skinned meshes? ie. can I have normal mapped character models or is it just for rigid meshes?

and on another technical question, is there a way to make the code display normalmapped models with mirrored UWV's correctly? because in my oFusion viewer the mirrored part displays the normals as if the light was coming from the opposite direction

thanks

You might want to check out the regular ogre "Artists & Content Creators" section: http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8

There's a very in depth video in there ("Free Video tutorials on Importing Animations into Ogre"): http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10040 which will explain heaps about the process.

As for normal mapping I'm sure you can do it in ogre too, but I dont know where an example is

You should hide the bones (when not using biped) so they are not exported as a mesh object

The resulting .skeleton file will contain all the animations (as defined in the animation list)

When the character (or skeletal animated object) is loaded in your application, you can request the animationState using the name of the animation (the name used by the animation in the animation list) and then you should update this animationState as needed

See the Skeletal demo example that comes with the Ogre SDK

You can use normal mapped materials on skinned objects, but your nm shader should be made to support either hardware or software skinned skeletal animation, depending on what your skeletal object uses

Mirrored objects use a negative matrix, so the light will be inverted

Mirrored objects are correctly supported in the next updates, but you should never use mirrored object, or at least "Reset Xform" on them so the matrix parity is fixed (converted to non negative matrix)

thanks for your reply Lioric

so if I hide the bones before exporting they will be included on the skeleton? oh good. For a second I thought ogre didn't support bones (only biped)

the resulting .skeleton file will contain all the animations. however my workflow is about making different work files for each animation (easier for me to test, specially with looped ones). if I do this I will get a different OSM for every animation export that I do, and apparently they all need to be in the same OSM. so is there a way to merge the animations?
if it was in the xml format then I'd be able to put them in with notepad, but oFusion doesn't export to xml. Is there a way to do this? can I convert a .skeleton file back to .skeleton.xml for editing using the command line tools?

so I can use normal mapped materials on skinned objects, but how do I make the nm shader support skinned skeletal animation? any way I can get an example of this?

about mirrored objects, I am not refering to mirrored polygons, but mirrored UWV's. with mirrored UWV's I make two polygon's uwv's use the same texture space. when applied a diffuse texture it displays fine, however not all engines allow this when it comes to normal maps (some engines just display the normal map inverted in those mirrored uwv's polygons (the lighting that hits the polygon seems as if being cast from an opposite angle)
so does OGRE allow two polygons to use the same texture space in uwv coordinates?


sorry I am new to ogre and oFusion
thanks for helping me

however my workflow is about making different work files for each animation
Search in the main forum. It's done with shareSkeleton.
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... d+skeleton
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... d+skeleton
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... d+skeleton
etc... i think this will help you.

so does OGRE allow two polygons to use the same texture space in uwv coordinates?
Yes.