Hi people! This is my first post here, just like to start by saying nehe is amazing! ::The Theroy:: Im not sure if this is quite accurate but this is what ive concluded. Okay im sure everyone knows how half life models work. If not ill quickly explain. they use a standard mesh with a bone structure. And then they have another file thats just the bone animation. In the game, the engine combines the mesh and the bone/animation file and deforms the mesh based on its bone points to the animation bone model. This is a great way to do character or any kind of animation. If youy make changes to the base model you dont have to re animate all the frames. Second you can edit/creat animations independent of the model. Make changes to the animation, with out dealing with meshes. Another plus is that if you have 2 models that will have the same animation (i.e. running) you can apply the same animation to multiple models. ::The Obstical:: Im currently in pre-pre game dev (as in design doc stage) of a MMORPG. And im working out the way the game will work. Im using milkshape 3d to model all my objects and loading them a-la tut32 from nehe. If i were to make my base mesh with a joint/bone structure, and then make another model thats just joints being animated. Is it possible to load these, link them and deform them realtime in openGL? I havent seen any tutorials on this (maybe a future nehe tutorial?) I know I could just find code to load a halflife model. But where is the fun/creativity in that? Its just another model viewer rip off. The game im making now will be 100% original. No quake or whatever fps file loading. we are not making advanced mods viewers =) Any info on this theroy or technical will be very helpful! If you have problems understanding this, ill try to explain it a little more. Thx for reading this somewhat long post. laterz ~akudoi

Man, it''s EXACTLY what I''m looking for !

I''m currently building up an 3D engine like yours. A tutorial on animation/bone/mesh would be really great!

i think you both would be interested in Brett Porter''s tutorial on skeletal animation :
http://rsn.gamedev.net/tutorials/ms3danim.asp

Thanks Man thats going to help me out A LOT! =)