Animation and Modeling preparation irrlicht engine use

[B-Rad]

Hello, after much reading throughout this forum and others, Ive heard of different ways to achieve what Im trying to do.
Im trying to limit the animation time i need to spend on all my game models. Essentially trying to figure out if my reasoning is correct,

my thoughts are that I can make a basic model for all my characters (bipeds at least). Then model the different heads, bodys, legs, feet, arms, hands, shoulders, back, and waist separately. Basically have interchangable body parts for use with decapitation, showing the armor you have equiped, etc. In game the base mesh(with all the animations) is loaded, then each body part is attached to the base mesh at its respective position.
My questions are as follows :
1) In this situation would the attached body parts move when the parent base mesh is animated?

2) Does Irrlicht suport a mesh heirarchy such as this?

3) Would the base mesh have to contain any polys at all or can it be just a skeleton (bone system) with animation?

4) Would this cause a performance slow down in an online environment given that each client has the mesh data stored locally, but is recieving all the mesh configurations of all the other players in the game area?

5) Ill get back to you when I think of more. I know I have more questions but this is a good start

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and answers.

[B-Rad]

kinda quiet the past few days eh?

[hybrid]

Pretty quiet, indeed. I think all your answers can get a yes, but maybe Luke should have a look here, too. I hope he comes around in the next days

[rogerborg]

then each body part is attached to the base mesh at its respective position.

To a joint, not to the mesh.

1) In this situation would the attached body parts move when the parent base mesh is animated?

If you attach them to a joint, then yes (IIUIC). However, that's just position, not orientation. Example:

Code: Select all

    braiiiinsss 
   / 
O
|--  <- zombie arms point forward
|
L

*SHOTGUN*


, . , __O__  <- arms still point forward, even though
                      the zombie's torso is rotated 90 degrees 

2) Does Irrlicht suport a mesh heirarchy such as this?

It has (in 1.4beta onwards) a joint/bone hierarchy.

3) Would the base mesh have to contain any polys at all or can it be just a skeleton (bone system) with animation?

A naked joint system should be fine.

4) Would this cause a performance slow down in an online environment given that each client has the mesh data stored locally, but is recieving all the mesh configurations of all the other players in the game area?

If you send orientation for each bone, then it would of course increase the amount of data being sent. The real question is whether that would be significant, and that's an application issue.

Of course, I may be completely misunderstanding the new joint system; if you jump on IRC, Luke (aka LukePH) is often on there, and he'll have the definitive answers.