DELED OGRE MESH EXPORTER
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Installation
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Simply unzip the DLLs into the Plugin folder of your DeleD installation. In addition to the actual dll, a dedicated subfolder will be unzipped containing readme.txt and history.txt. The next time DeleD is started, the plugins will be loaded.


Usage & Options
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Invoke the plugin from the DeleD Plugin menu. If this is the first time you invoke the plugin, a file-dialog will appear, allowing you to select a filename for your Ogre mesh file export. Depending on the selected file extension a .mesh or .XML file will be saved. For convenience reasons, the exporter remembers the name of the selected file. Next time you invoke plugin, you will automatically save to the same file, unless you select a different file using the browse (...) button. 

The plugin window offers you the following set of options:

- Scale factor: You might want to adjust the scale of the mesh, so that it matches up with the rest of the scene when you load it into your target application. Use fractional numbers (0.5, 0.001, etc) to make objects smaller.

- Export Materials: If this option is turned off, the .material file is not exported. 

- Material Path (relative): If the .material file should be placed in a different folder than the .mesh file, specify the relative path here, or browse for it using the browse (...) button. For example, when using the Ogre sample media folder structure you would specify "..\materials\scripts" here. 

- Allow dynamic lighting: By default, materials that are not lightmapped allow dynamic lighting (colour_op modulate), while lightmapped surfaces do not (colour_op replace). You can override this setting so lightmapped surfaces are affected by dynamic lighting as well. 

- Export Textures: If this option is turned off, the physical texture files won't be exported.

- Texture Path (relative): If textures should be placed in a different folder than the .mesh file, specify the relative path here, or browse for it using the browse (...) button. For example, when using the Ogre sample media folder structure you would specify "..\materials\textures" here. 

- Export Lightmaps: If you have lightmaps generated for your current map, but don't want to export them, turn this option off. Note that when exporting a lightmapped level with this option turned off, the names of the materials will still be those of the lightmapped materials. 

- Material Name Prefix: To keep the material resource names globally unique in your Ogre application, the exporter will prefix them with this string. Unless you have explicitly emptied this field, specifying you don't want a prefix at all, the prefix will default to the mesh file name whenever you select a new mesh/xml file to save to.

- Normals to Export: At this moment, DeleD only uses face normals internally. You can either choose to store those or have the exporter calculate smooth normals (smoothed on a per-submesh base). As there are probably better tools around for calculating normals, you can also opt to leave the normals out completely. Note that, due to the way normals are stored inside the vertex-data, exporting face normals will usually result in a slightly larger file than exporting smoothed normals.

The plugin will remember the options you last selected (it stores them in a .ini file).

If you press ok, the export will start. A progress bar will appear showing the export progress. 


Bug Reports and Feedback
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Found a bug? Got some suggestions? Either post them in the forum or contact me directly, at http://www.delgine.com


Paul-Jan Pauptit, 18-5-2006


N.B. The background logo used in the exporter form is a derivative from the original Ogre logo, as found in Samples/Media/materials/textures subfolder of the Ogre distribution. Visit http://www.ogre3d.org for more information.