Make an animated character with dynamically changed clothes

[Helgiii]

hi to you all..
I'm a newby to the engine.. and want to find out if there is a nice way to do the SUBJ...
Animated characters, cloth and everything else is going to be made in 3dmax 8.. or maya..
1. What is the best format to export animation to.. and what kind of animation is better (I guess skeleton.. as I know).. so it is obviously *.x or ?
2. Clothes are going to be separate objects (files).. Is there a way we can tie these objects (skins) to the animated naked character.. we need to know and store how to link them also.. that's the key question

I'm a programmer and am up to create a clickemanager using popcap framework.. that is used in our company.. but the game requires about 12 characters and lots of different clothes... so 2d animation doesn't fit.. So I'm in search for a cool 3d solution.... Any ideas?

[Helgiii]

quake2's format MD2 is morph based so it is not an option... am I right? as we are going to tie our clothes to bones..
I would make them female and naked myself.., honestly
but the target auditory is american housekeepers!!!!!!!!!!

[hybrid]

Skeletal animations are available via .x, .b3d, and .ms3d in Irrlicht. While .x is widely used, it's often quite picky to export and use. In Irrlicht .b3d seems to work best.
In Irrlicht 1.4 you can easily access and modify joints in a uniform way across all these formats, so your implementation can go without dependencies on the animation model format used.

[Helgiii]

thanx hybrid... the format selection question is closed now..
any ideas about the cloth.?

here is a similar thread... cloth and armour attaching.. but still few info
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... ight=cloth

one more... saying that we should add a child mesh (node) to character
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... 886#137886