Combine blend shape and skeleton animation

wing64 · Post by **wing64** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 3:35 am

Hello
1. Could possible combine blend shape and skeleton animation in single model and export to irrLicht ?
2. If it possible, What format to handle it ? (B3D or X)
best regards,

christianclavet · Post by **christianclavet** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 2:09 pm

That's one thing I would like to be sure of. I think B3D and X format support it, but how does IRRlicht support them?

wing64 · Post by **wing64** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 4:11 pm

I found MGS4 Facial Animation http://www.chrisevans3d.com/pub_blog/?p=31. Them use blend shape animation to low polygon and cover bone on the top after finish blend shape then export to single mesh with bone only.
I don't understand about this technique. If someone know that please suggest me.

Frank Dodd · Post by **Frank Dodd** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:37 pm

This is something I have thought about too, using a canned animation on a character, for example a walk cycle and then using another animation method to animate an expression onto a face for example.

The only way I can think of doing it is to play an animation in a node and then manually control the animation of particular bones, so your character could play a walk cycle and you could manually swivel their neck so they look at a particular target and manually shape a set of face bones to create an expression.

The other alternative of course is to use two meshes, a body mesh and a face mesh set as a child of the body.

I would also like to hear any other suggestions.

Frank Dodd · Post by **Frank Dodd** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 7:04 pm

I was taking a look at the Irrlicht code last night for the animated mesh before I fell off to sleep. it does appear that the Animated Mesh supports the functionality of weighted blending of multiple animations, but the Animated Scene Node above it supplies a single weight of 1.0

I am wondering if the node could be modified simply to allow it to make multiple calls and create blended animations.