I have two quick questions about meshes so I thought I'd just toss them both into the same thread.
My first question is, does Irrlicht use hardware mesh buffers, or software buffers? If hw, is there any user control over this and are fallback measures in place for people with ancient gpus?
My second question is about mesh buffers and their relation to bones or joints. I assume that mesh buffers represent the different mesh 'groups' a model may have when exported. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a way of obtaining a particular mesh group from the exported group name, only an index. However, joint information can be retrieved easily using the exported joint name. Is there any way of figuring out which bone/joint a particular mesh buffer is parented to, or given a particular joint, figuring out which mesh buffers are it's children?
FYI, my ultimate goal is to implement a ragdoll physics solution into irrlicht in which normal animated meshes can be converted to lifeless ragdolls at runtime.
hw mesh buffers and bones
1: Irrlicht has no hardware buffers, so no fallbacks needed.
2: You should base your application not on the current trunk version of Irrlicht, but rather on the branch with the new animation system as discussed in this thread: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=18782
This improves Irrlichts animation system from the ground up and only this branch will give you control over what vertices are influenced by what joints.
I am not too deep into this development, but I believe, that joints store not the buffers they influence, but more fine grained, the vertex indices. I am not sure I understand what you mean with mesh buffer in this context, they don't map with Blenders vertex groups or anything. Multiple joints can influence the same or a different subset of vertices inside a single buffer.
Anyway, to answer the question: Yes, you can get the vertices that are influenced by a joint. And Luke can tell you how exactly.
2: You should base your application not on the current trunk version of Irrlicht, but rather on the branch with the new animation system as discussed in this thread: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=18782
This improves Irrlichts animation system from the ground up and only this branch will give you control over what vertices are influenced by what joints.
I am not too deep into this development, but I believe, that joints store not the buffers they influence, but more fine grained, the vertex indices. I am not sure I understand what you mean with mesh buffer in this context, they don't map with Blenders vertex groups or anything. Multiple joints can influence the same or a different subset of vertices inside a single buffer.
Anyway, to answer the question: Yes, you can get the vertices that are influenced by a joint. And Luke can tell you how exactly.