Chapter 13. Rendering Skeletal Animation

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating the Frame Hierarchy

• Loading Meshes with Animation

• Rendering Animated Meshes

• In Brief

You don't see modern games render a bunch of static items; instead you see rich environments that are fluid. Characters are fully animated, with much of the animation coming from a motion capture studio. Models are designed with “bones” that can be positioned and animated to simulate motion. Aside from these complex animations, there are also other simple animation types, dealing mainly with scaling, rotation, and translation. This chapter will cover rendering meshes with animation data, including

• Loading frame hierarchy

• Generating any skeletal information

• Rendering each frame

• Advancing the animation time

• Using indexed animation for better performance