Irrlicht Engine

Hey everyone =)
My name is Yanko, im a computer sciences student from Brazil, and i just got into a small game developing group on my university. I´ve been searching for quite some time now and i think Irrlicht might be the best engine for me right now. Mainly because its quite complete, and everyone´s general oppinion seems to be that it´s quite quick to get started on it. Also because i have close to no experience on C++ (i just know the very basic OO theory, and the max i could do is coating a procedural code with OO), and it seemed to me (by the code snippets) quite friendly on that area too.

So, my project right now is this: i gotta build a small chatterbot with an animated 3d face for what would be a different interface for a library search. Pretty much screwed, working on a single man team, yeah

Anyway, my plan for a "techdemo" would be

- a 3d animated face;
- a textbox for the chat;
- using AIML to build a basic bot (AIML is a markup language compliant with XML), using IrrXML to integrate it on the code;
- Integrating (somehow) the library search system we have in the university through an HTTP query, and parsing the result so i could display the results on the textbox somehow;

My problem right now is: by all that i´ve read, irrlicht´s animation system is being revised fully. But i gotta start ASAP. So, my main question right now would be: do you guys think irrlicht is usable for doing facial animations without deep code changes? If im not mistaken, i´d have to use hard-coded direct-kinematics skeletal animation, since there isnt IK systems or morphing. So, am I right about that? If i am, is there somewhere i could research to do morphing between two meshes (like we´d do on 3dMax´s "morph" plugin)? And another one, if i started coding, how big would be the changes i´d have to do on my code to attach the new animation system after it´s done?

So i ask of thee, what are your general thoughts?

Tons of questions, so thanks a lot already to those who took the time to read it all

Yanko wrote:do you guys [think] irrlicht is usable for doing facial animations without deep code changes?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: noooooooooooooooooo.

rogerborg wrote:

Yanko wrote:do you guys [think] irrlicht is usable for doing facial animations without deep code changes?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: noooooooooooooooooo.

haha ok, so i predicted that one answer right
anyway, if anyone could give me some deeper thoughts into the whole thing, it´d be great

The Ogre engine comes with an animated face demo. Not saying that it couldn't be done with Irrlicht out of the box similarly.

You Comp Sci students never know any C++

Use the custom bones extension or wait for the new model handling system, then you can use bones to animate the face model...

BlindSide wrote:You Comp Sci students never know any C++

Use the custom bones extension or wait for the new model handling system, then you can use bones to animate the face model...

i must admit that's quite true
our teachers are mostly good in C, cause they're "old", and when they try to innovate on the OO class, they teach Java (badly )

anyway, that's more what i was asking for, thanks.
Gonna search about the custom bones extension

Incase you get lost the url is : http://abusoft.g0dsoft.com/

But sadly last I heard he has not updated to 1.3 so might have to use 1.2 unless you are familliar with the engine enough to make the required changes.
(I think if you use just the custom bones it will be ok in 1.3, since it will not touch any of the material API that was the main area of change in IAnimatedMeshSceneNodes from 1.2 to 1.3...but dont quote me on that...ever.. )

Cheers