>The problem that I see with your approach (simply exchanging the bone definitions) is: The mesh file contains the information what vertex is assigned to what bone. When I change those in the skeleton file only, then the vertices get assigned to the wrong bone and the model will still look warped. So, instead of manually adjusting all vertex assignments in the mesh file after exporting it

My solution was actually to handle the case you just discribed. By reorganizing the bone defninitions to the order in the original clonk skeleton to fit its vertex assignments, if you don't use the exported .mesh. Because you do, this approach is obsolete.

But then I don't get your earlier mentioned problem either. With your fresh exported mesh and skeleton all indices and vertex assignments should be fine. And the additional DummyRootBone doesn't change anything substantial. Can you give some more detail (maybe a screenshot or somewhat like that)?