I’m developing a 3D action/strategy game using Ogre as rendering engine and Blender as 3D tool. The problem is that I have an associate who uses Cinema 4D.
I must convert the models/animation/skeletons/materials to Ogre format but Cinema 4D Ogre exporters are pretty bad. I figured that Cinema 4D -> Blender -> Ogre was the way to go.
Until now I’ve exported the model to dae format but skeleton and textures are lost in the way. Is there any solution for my problem? I don’t want my friend’s work to be wasted!
The best universal exchange format is still OBJ. Alternatively FBX should work (Even with bones, as far as I know). Since Blender 2.5x’s lack of suitable importers, you’ll probably first have to use Blender 2.49 importers and exporters, to get other formats transferred between the apps, but from my view you won’t have any problems with OBJs or FBXs.
I’ve managed to save the project to a 3D studio file using FBX converter and imported it into Blender by performing a modification in the correspondent script. Some objects have been moved and the UV mapping presents some errors. No sign of animation.
You might want to try the direct X format out of Cinema. I think is can export animation as well as mesh.
Textures are not that big of a deal. You just have to re-link them. I’m fairly sure that even OBJ preserves any UV mapping coordinates that your friend may have done. Even if all you have is a grey mesh, you can set the material to UV mapping and browse to the image map in the C4D folder and it should show up in a Blender render.