I want to create a character and use skeletal animation in openGL, but my modeling package doesn''t use bones or any of that kind of animation, i figured i could just create a skeleton in notepad or make a basic program to edit skeletons but i dont know how to assign vertices to the bones, is this somthing i could write and make a prog do for me?? or do you guys recommend just making a program where i can assign vertices myself with the mouse?

I don't know how detailed your characters are but the way i (am going to) do it is by specifying joints and bones and then, when rotating the joints, i make sure the bones begin at always the same distance to the origin of the joint.
To assign vertices to the joints/bones, set a maximum distance value to the joints an follow the lines between the vertices till the distance is reached (in worldspace or the actual distance crossed throught the lines, see what's best). Assign all reached points to the joint, the rest to the bone attached.
The vertices assigned to the joint are moved in such a way that the area is smoothly covered with the vertices. For example when you bend your wrist, the skin becomes stretched at one side and more dense at the other, this it what you should aim for. The vertices of the bones might also be moved according to the distance to the joint (if you move your wrist your skin is moving till up to your shoulder) but you might just want to move texcoords there.

Anyway, this is the way i experimented with, and i think it pretty good for a medium/low quality animation program.

[edited by - Tree Penguin on January 21, 2004 3:51:44 AM]

That makes sense except one thing, if I get the distance some vertices are from the joint wont that mean that i am getting vertices from all around the joint? if i do that wont the arm bend in the wrong place? i thought i had to get vertices just from one side of the joint, take the elbow joint for instance: i assign verts to the elbow joint that are inbetween the elbow joint and the wrist joint...and no verts between the elbow and shoulder would get assigned to the elbow joint...am i picturing this right?

You could do that, but the models that will be made for my program will be modelled with the arms spread so the detail of the arm-pit is still good if the arms are spread (not like 5 triangles at the bottom and 50 at the top). This isn''t that important but in some cases it looks better, look it up yourself .