Animating in Blender

[Clean3d]

Sorry if this question's been asked before, but I DID do a search.

I'm getting to the point in my game where I need to animate my characters, and my questions are:

1. Do I animate my characters in Blender or Ogre?
2. If Blender, do I have to use Forward Kinematics for everything, or can I use Inverse Kinematics?
3. If Ogre, do I have to code the actions or is there an app for animating?

Thanks for helping yet-another-newbie.

[fp12]

You can animate skeletons in Blender and then export to be readen by Ogre (there's a mesh & skeleton exporter and then an xmlConverter).

Then in Ogre you can play your animation (look at the SkeletalAnimationDemo if it's what you want).

[reimpell]

There is also limited support vor absolute vertex key animations (no gui for export, not in conjunction with armature animations). If Blender's new animation system is done (probably Blender 2.40), I will resume the development of an integrated exporter for vertex and armature animations.

2. If Blender, do I have to use Forward Kinematics for everything, or can I use Inverse Kinematics?

You can use all kind of constraints (e.g. IKSolver) but you have to bake your action before exporting.

[Clean3d]

Ok, if I use IK solvers and bake the animation, can I delete the extra bones I was using for the parent of the IK chain? I tried that once and it messed things up. Also, if I have to leave that bone there does it slow down things much?

Thanks again.