Skeleton Animation Help

Hi folks, (particularly Peter M. and David F.)

I'm working on putting avatars together for iSocial and I've gotten an animated prototype put together in Blender. Here the file (anyone can use this--I released it under a CC share and share alike license):

http://bengal.missouri.edu/~schmidtma/temp/schmidtAvatarAnimation.blend

I tried to follow the instructions on the Croquet wiki, which are fine from a programming perspective, but I'm lost as far as my export from Blender is concerned. I've tried to export with the Ogre Python module but I know when I'm in over my head, so I'm submitting my Blender file to you and asking that you please take a look at it and instruct me what I need to do to get it into the proper Ogre XML format so I can start my experiments with the SkeletalAnimation codebase. A million thanks in advance.

-Matt

-----------

http://xaverse.blogspot.com

On 2/29/08, Matthew Schmidt <[hidden email]> wrote:
I downloaded your model and it looks very interesting.  I am a big
believer in the "teach a person to fish rather than giving them a
fish" idea, so here goes:

1. Load your model in Blender. Go to Object mode. Select all of your
model and skeleton.  I used the "b" key box-surround thingy to do
this.
2. Go to menu File->Export->OGRE Meshes.  This will bring up the
export panel.  I had a little difficulty here, but clicking on the
"full screen" icon near the upper left of this panel let me see the
whole panel.
3. At the top of the export panel, it will have the name of some
object in your model.  In this case it says Sphere.001.  I have not
had a lot of success at trying to rename things at this point, so just
leave this alone and know that will be the name of your OGRE export
files.  If you understand the structure of the OGRE files, you can
adjust these names manually later.
4.  In the Animation Settings portion of the panel, the first time you
do this there will just be an Add button.  Click it and it will bring
up your named animation with its parameters.  These you can adjust as
needed.  If your skeleton has multiple animations, you can add each
one here.
5.  In the Material Settings portion of the panel, you can change the
name of the materials file if desired.  It is probably a good idea to
make it the same as the basename of the model files.  Click the Copy
Textures button on.
6.  Leave the OgreXMLConverter off.  Right below that, you can change
the export directory where the OGRE files will be placed.
7. Click the Export button at the bottom.  You will get a bunch of
messages, including warnings about vertices not belonging to any bone.
 Then click Quit to get out of the exporter, or okay to go back to the
exporter panel.
8.  Outside of Blender, go look for the exported OGRE files.  There should be
  a mesh.xml file,
  a skeleton.xml file,
  a material file, and many times
  a texture image file

But in fact, when exporting this model I get several sets of these,
which means there are actually several different separate meshes.  In
order for the Croquet loader to work properly, there has to be a
single mesh, probably made by joining the individual parts as noted in
the middle of the Preliminary Guidelines on the page at
http://croquetconsortium.org/index.php/Skeletal_Animation_Example

Holler when you have more questions.
Dave