How do we do it in 3dsmax to share the same skeleton? Do we just export the skeleton along with all objects without any further setup? I'll try to reproduce it in Blender and see if it works.
you dont export skeleton seperately. you attach many objects to same skeleton with a proper modifier (pysique or skin). in OgreMax setup, you define animations (start - end frames). i'm not sure if you can define different animations for different objects but i dont think soo. finally you export your objects (not the skeleton) and skeleton is also automatically exported to a seperate file
My case is abit different though. E.g. I have a group of fish sharing the same skeleton animation. Each fish has different meshes but with same animation skeleton and has its own animation frame. Is it doable by using same skeleton?
I dont think so. even if so, (i.e. different objects have different animation sequences) Bones cannot import it.
but, if your objects will have different animations, sharing skeleton will not reduce memory usage that much. it will reduce but not that much. that's because the skeleton data itself is not that big (assuming you dont have too many joints in your skeleton). animation data itself is much bigger than that.