Sorry for the delay in my response, it seems I missed this post.
Axiom/Ogre only supports it's built in .mesh format. There are, of course, advantages/disadvantages to this:
+ There are excellent exporters available for almost every major commercial/freeware modeler
+ Ogre's .mesh format is extremely optimized and loads VERY fast - no parsing is required like .x and other mesh formats
+ There's no need to worry about if a specific feature in your exporter matches with Ogre's importer features (otherwise it can really be a pain debugging why your models don't show up right in engine A, but do in engine B)
+ Ogre meshes do not contain embedded material properties - this means that you don't have to keep re-editing your meshes in your modeler and re-exporting to get them to look right in your game - simply modify the material script and the changes take effect immediately.
+ Also because material properties aren't embedded in the mesh, you can use any of Ogre's rich set of material features, whether or not your modeler supports it or not (I used to be annoyed at how my modeler didn't support masked textures for trees, but not any more - simply add one line of text to the material script, and voila! )
- If you are using a obscure modeler, an Ogre mesh exporter may not be available.
- Many commercially/freely available model packs may have to be converted to Ogre's mesh format
What's the art pipeline like for Axion/Ogre ? On the website it only mentions the proprietary Ogre mesh format.
Axiom/Ogre only supports it's built in .mesh format. There are, of course, advantages/disadvantages to this:
+ There are excellent exporters available for almost every major commercial/freeware modeler
+ Ogre's .mesh format is extremely optimized and loads VERY fast - no parsing is required like .x and other mesh formats
+ There's no need to worry about if a specific feature in your exporter matches with Ogre's importer features (otherwise it can really be a pain debugging why your models don't show up right in engine A, but do in engine B)
+ Ogre meshes do not contain embedded material properties - this means that you don't have to keep re-editing your meshes in your modeler and re-exporting to get them to look right in your game - simply modify the material script and the changes take effect immediately.
+ Also because material properties aren't embedded in the mesh, you can use any of Ogre's rich set of material features, whether or not your modeler supports it or not (I used to be annoyed at how my modeler didn't support masked textures for trees, but not any more - simply add one line of text to the material script, and voila! )
- If you are using a obscure modeler, an Ogre mesh exporter may not be available.
- Many commercially/freely available model packs may have to be converted to Ogre's mesh format