[Solved]Recommended texture animation method?

[dc740]

UPDATE:
I don't know if it's the best way to do it, but I implemented a few classes that work just fine. Here is the irrlicht example:
https://mega.co.nz/#!sVNEjIjD!A5OH1ktI5 ... HMMneIzhaA

What I did:
1)Implemented a Billboard that supports using it as a standard Billboard, but it also supports NOT looking at the camera. You can simply set where it looks at by setting the orientation.
2)Implemented a texture animator that can be used like the standard texture animator, and it also can be used with a texture matrix. You can also configure it to play only once instead of looping, and you can restart the animation any time you want.

Known bugs:
* I didn't update the "Serialize" and "deserialize" methods with the extra attributes I added.

The example:
Three Billboards, two of them look at the camera.
One plays a sonic animation every 5 seconds, the others are looping a texture matrix





Original post:
Hello, this is my first post and I have a very basic question. Which one of these methods would you recommend to animate a texture:

1) Use setMaterialTexture on each loop to "update" the texture in IAnimatedMeshSceneNode
(taken from here: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/forum/v ... hp?t=29349 )


2) Use TAnimSprite and load only one big texture. then "scroll" through the textures to simulate the animation
(taken from here: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/forum// ... f=4&t=6471 )


3) Using a billboard and a texture animator
(taken from here: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/forum/v ... reanimator and
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/forum/v ... r&start=15 )

You are probably thinking: "ok, but what do YOU want to do?".
I want to have a 2D character on screen, with several animations. Some of them are in the same image, some of them are not.

Extra points: Sometimes I would like to draw one animation on top of the other. Suggestions?


Thanks for reading!

[hendu]

Texture atlas/texture array + vertex shader/texture matrix is the most efficient way. But if you only have one such char, it doesn't really matter, use what you prefer.

[tasulife]

Try out the included 2d graphics tutorial if you have not yet. There is a animation example.

[dc740]

AFAIK, the demo and 2D tutorial in irrlicht only covers basic 2D drawing on the screen. What I actually want is a billboard with a texture animator, that doesn't point at the camera all the time (I know it sounds weird), and it's efficient enough to show a lot of "sprites" on the screen simultaneously.

About the texture atlas, the TAnimSprite implementation uses that method, but I'll try to make the texture animator+billboard do the same. I have to use .push_back(texture) for each frame, so now my problem is how to extract the texture from the matrix. I'm still getting used to irrlicht.

So I'll basically re-implement a billboard, but I'll remove the part where it faces to the camera all the time. I could use some help on pushing each texture separately from one big texture matrix

Thank you guys.

[dc740]

Since I'm just a newbie on these, I ended up trying the TAnimSprite. It does what I need, but could you guys point me to the right direction when it comes to rotating and moving the ISceneNode? (moving it would be the most important)

https://web.archive.org/web/20061012222 ... h_Irrlicht

The original implementation doesn't work with the FPS camera. I move around and the image stays in the same position. It only works partially if I remove all the transformations from the render() method (the rotation and movement stops working)

Any hints?
Thanks!

If you want to try it:
https://mega.co.nz/#!kJN3nayL!xSJ1yj5Wr ... PrbWdRY13I

Place it in irrlicht-1.8.1/examples and open it with Codeblocks. It should be ready to run. Note that I removed the transformations from the render() method

[dc740]

I solved it. I updated the first post with the result. It's the first thing I do with irrlicht, so there might be some errors in the code.