I googled a little and read a little, but I'm not sure what to google for.
Is there some generall guide on how modelling (and modell-code interaction) works ? Or are they all specific to the used programms (that's what I found). What I want to know is basically:
a) If there is animatins, say some modell running or dancing or whatnot, are those animations created with the modell and then saved in some kind of list or array, or how is this handled ?
b) If I have a modell wich can have different looks (wich most do I guess), how would that be handled. For example, say I had a warrior able to equip some weapon. Would I have 2 modells, one with the item equipped, and one without it (doubt that, since it would become rather cumbersome in say a mmorpg enviroment with n+1 equipment choices). Or does the model maybe have 2 "sets of arms", one with said weapon equipped, one without it ?
(sorry if this is pretty basic stuff, but all I coded was apps and console stuff so far (mainly linux), no clue about graphics really)
Modelling questions
a) Yes, create the animations in your modelling program. Irrlicht is able to load animated .x, .ms3d, .md2, and there is a patch on the forums for loading .ms3d. I am not sure whether .3ds supports animations as I dislike the format and rarely use it.
b) If you use .x or .ms3d models the animation will be skeletal, that is bone positions and vertex weigts will be stored in the file and the exact vertex positions will be calculated at runtime. Because the bone positions are stored, irrlicht has functions for creating a scene node that will exactly follow the transformation of a bone in the mesh. This allows you to attach a weapon to a hand. Note that irrlicht out of the box only has support for doing this with .ms3d. If you want to use this with .x you need to use a version which has my fixes and addons in it. You can use irrlichtNX or you can see the thread by me in the FAQ forum "Added IAnimatedMeshSceneNode::getXJointNode"
b) If you use .x or .ms3d models the animation will be skeletal, that is bone positions and vertex weigts will be stored in the file and the exact vertex positions will be calculated at runtime. Because the bone positions are stored, irrlicht has functions for creating a scene node that will exactly follow the transformation of a bone in the mesh. This allows you to attach a weapon to a hand. Note that irrlicht out of the box only has support for doing this with .ms3d. If you want to use this with .x you need to use a version which has my fixes and addons in it. You can use irrlichtNX or you can see the thread by me in the FAQ forum "Added IAnimatedMeshSceneNode::getXJointNode"
You do a lot of programming? Really? I try to get some in, but the debugging keeps me pretty busy.
Crucible of Stars
Crucible of Stars