I was a member of a small team that did that. I was not the main person
for the implementations, but I can share what I know. On a side note,
though, we are researchers for a University and we were mostly concentrated
in the intelligence, speech, and emotions. Not in the speed. Our program
requires a PII 400 with GeForce 256 (at least) in order to run smoothly.
We found that the nicest looking graphics were in VRML. We, thus, exported
all models from 3dstudio in VRML and imported them using the vrml97
package. We did not use skins and bones, though we knew it was possible
and it would probably be smoother. Instead, we put a pivot point for each
object. A pivot point is like a joint: the center of rotation for the
corresponding object. The rest is as simple as setting up the hierarchies
(i.e. torso->shoulder->UpperArn->foreArm->hand->etc) and setting
constraints for the min and max angles that each body-part can have with
respect to the previous body-part of the hierarchy (constraints are not
necessary, but they may prove useful in finding errors).
One this is done, all you have to do is figure out the angles by which an
object must be rotated for each particular movement. We just created a
tool that allowed a user to choreograph interactively. This includes a
frame sequence. Each frame stores the angles at which each body part is
set. Our human wasn't walking. If you require movement, just store a
translational component as well. Interpolation is fairly easy. You
probably already know how to do this, or you can find out from the source
code of java's interpolators.
That was, in simple terms, our idea. Naive, but useful.
Paraskevas
--- John Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Nick,
>
> Join the club {smile}. Several of us would like to come up with some
> good solutions for animation, specifically for models imported from 3D
> Studio Max. I've started on adding this ability to import the animation
> info from 3DS via our loader but higher priority tasks have bumped it
> way down my to do list (probably won't get to it for several more
> months).
>
> - John Wright
> Starfire Research
>
> Nick Armstrong wrote:
> >
> > I am considering writing a game with character animation. Does anybody
> > know any good techniques (and how to implement them if possible) for
> > animating characters and anything else for that matter.
> >
> > I know about morphing in Java3D and "key frame over bones" (used a lot
> > in opengl and DirectX eg Quake etc) but not much on implementing them
> > or any tools available.
> >
> > I will be using 3D Studio to create the meshes with textures and
> > importing them. Can the textures be used in any way using Morphing?
> >
> > Any help will be MUCH appreciated.
> >
> > Nick
> >
> >
>
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>
>
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