No fixed function skinning?

[Imperil]

I am not nit-picking or anything, I am just curious if there is a reason that Ogre decided to go the route of having no fixed function hardware skinning?

[tuan kuranes]

But there is fixed function hardware skinning.
or perhaps you're talking about something else than waht is shown in demo_skeletal_animation ?
(try replacing the robots by the ninja and you'get software skinning)

[Imperil]

Is that not shader based hardware skinning?

I am meaning the fixed-function hardware skinning such as DirectX Indexed Skinning which is non-shader based.

EDIT: Yeah I just checked and that is shader-based skinning as the robot has a defined gpu program.

[:wumpus:]

We decided not to go with that as it there are no cards that can really benefit from it. I think the reason was: The cards actually supporting this fixed-function skinning properly, also do basic vertex shaders.

On earlier cards it was buggy or just very ill supported.

[Imperil]

Ah ok great thanks for the info wumpus. I'm just poking around trying to find the best way to support a wide range of cards from the MX series up to the 6x00 series.

I hadn't used FFP skinning on an older card so I had no idea they were supported badly.

Thanks

[:wumpus:]

Yeah, the best way to support animation on the really old cards is to use a LOD bias to make the meshes lowpoly/lowvertex (you need to, anyway) and software skinning.

[Imperil]

Along with getting the vertices and tri count down should I also aim for reducing as many bones as possible before software skinning? Or is this more based off the mesh data over the skeleton data?

[:wumpus:]

I don't think the number of bones really matters for software skinning (the animation work on the bones itself is done in both the software and hardware cases, anyway); the number of bone assignments/weights per vertex is to be minimized, though.

[Imperil]

Great thanks a million for the information wumpus, it really helps