Coordinate Translations

How do you go about converting 3ds coordinates and sizes into OGRE sizes?

For instance, I made a sphere with a radius of 30 in 3ds max, and it appears huge in my OGRE scene (compared to what 30 units would be in OGRE). How can I tell the radius of the sphere in OGRE coordinates?

with units if you use generic units in Max its 1:1. YOu just have to decide what scale you want to make one unit and equal in real life measurements.

I try to keep it as small as possible because in 3d engines you lose precision the further you go from the origin. And over 10,000 units from 0,0,0 can leave you with weird drawing glitches.

Another advantage to a small scale is that its less work for the engine, you can use shorter camera ranges and fog and your line picks that are required for gameplay. THings like picking waypoints with dynamic AI or shooting distant objects are less strain on the CPU the shorter your linepick/raycast is.

You should really determine a suitable scale to work with before you start your project. That way you can build to your scale from the start and have fewer Xform problems, and won't have to colapse the stack and fiddle around with max so much.

The scale tool in max only scales visualy but doesn't effect the system unit that max scale is derived from. So you have to be carful if your modelers use tools like scale and mirror to adjust meshes to fit.

Most of the time a simple reset Xform and collapse of the stack, both avaliable from the utilities tab will fix your problems, but will destry your modifier stack.

Thanks. I went back and remodelled at 1:30 scale and it's working great =D