.md3 or .x for animations

[Alpha Omega]

For those people that have experience in importing animations from blender which format is better. I know one offers bone animations while one does morph animation. At this stage of the game I don't have a preference. Anyone could provide any logistics for choosing one over the other?

[Cube_]

err... potato potatoe?
I am not really sure which is best or worst,,,,

all up to personal preference I guess.....

[3DModelerMan]

It depends on what kind of animations you want. The .x format supports skeletal animation, but not morphing animation. The .md3 format supports morphing but not skeletal.

P.S
Let me clarify: the .x format technically supports morphing animation. However the Irrlicht engine doesn't support morphing with .x meshes.

[Alpha Omega]

Well I haven't used either its my first time doing animations. So maybe I should ask is there any technical difference between them? I am trying to plan for the future. So maybe something that doesn't lock me down to any particular area?

[hendu]

Morph -> more vram used, bigger model size, no anim calculations runtime
Skel -> less vram, smaller model, runtime calculations

CPU vs ram tradeoff.

[Radikalizm]

Morph -> more vram used, bigger model size, no anim calculations runtime
Skel -> less vram, smaller model, runtime calculations

CPU vs ram tradeoff.

Don't forget to mention that morph target animation allows detailed per-vertex animations which can be set manually by an artists if required. Skeletal animation can't get this kind of detail

If you need basic movement of characters, vehicles, whatever, I'd say go for skeletal animation and don't worry about morph animation too much. If you're feeling adventurous you could even try to implement hardware skinning to speed up the process
If you need fine-grained animation on a per-vertex level you should try to use both

[Mel]

I'd say that you went ahead with the X format. Morph animations are okay (and still, you could use them if you wished, for example, that would be the best choice for good facial animations) but skeletal animations have the advantage that for complex meshes (of thousands of polygons) you can resort to GPU skinning, and move the skinning outside of the CPU. Morph animations become more and more expensive as the amount of polygons increase. And they can't be stored statically on the CPU, you have to move them from ram to vram constantly, with the overhead it means.

[3DModelerMan]

And you can extend skeletal animation with IK and dynamically generated animations (like ragdoll physics).

[fmx]

What about .B3D format?
Since you mentioned Blender, I am fairly certain that B3D is a good option for exporting skeletal animation data as well as .X

[3DModelerMan]

If you use Blender 2.4.x then B3D is the best format. Blender 2.5 and above doesn't have a B3D exporter (at least that I know of).