I use Python for coding and Blender for modelling and that works pretty well so far, but what 3d model format can I export the models to that will retain all of the rigging, or even just the vertex groups. Someone suggested that I just save every frame of animation as a Waveront .obj file but is there a better way? Thanks.

I hope so, there should be a format that has skeleton support which is what you would want for, a human or whatever. What about .x or cal3d?

I'm probably missing something obvious here, but when I attempt to export the model as cal3D, I get the following error:


0 action_items
Cal3D Saved to "violet-dragon.cfg"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 1102, in export_cal3d_ui
File "<string>", line 1080, in export_cal3d
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'animation' referenced before assignment


All the files seem to be there but the cfg file is empty.

Blender isn't good for exporting animations. I have seen some people get DX animation to work properly, but I couldn't get the setup right. I ended up writing my own export script to load animations into GL.