Ogre Forums

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.

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).

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.

Clean3d wrote: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.

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.