Preface

I was raised and educated as an engineer. Not an engineer for a locomotive (though I would've loved to have been such in the days of steam), but, by education and experience, an engineer in the fields of nuclear, controls and instrumentation, and a brief career at Oak Ridge National Lab in t…

This blog entry describes the continuing adventure of coding an editor for a skinned mesh which has skeletal animation. Coding this app is intended not as a destination, but as a journey of learning through the features and capabilities of D3D11.

Continuing Summary

After laying down the framework of …

A previous blog entry discusses the concept of using a second render target to store mesh data during rendering as an approach for picking vertices and faces. That entry didn't go into any detail with regard to picking faces (triangles).

Acknowledgement

It should be known, and bears repeating from pr…

Disclaimer

Credit for the concept of Pixel Perfect Picking in D3D11 belongs to gamedev member unbird, a wizard with shaders. However, since I'm basically lazy, I coined the acronym PPP, and adapted the idea to my needs.

N.B., some of the implementations below require SM5.

The PPP Approach

The idea is t…

Years ago, back when I was gainfully employed, I took a management class as part of my employer's "career enhancement" plan. It completely changed the way I thought (and still think) about how an organization can (and should) be run.

The concept is that the staff of a company ( or a division of the …

At the moment I have a hierarchy of objects:

class VzAppManager - base class for storing persistent data and providing support - GetGraphics(), GetWindow(), SetEditMenu(), etc.

class MeshEdit3Manager - inherits from VzAppManager. Explicit class for my mesh editor. I could have just expanded VzAppMana…

I'm a fan of menus and accelerators (keyboard shortcuts) that depend on the context. I like to edit with one hand on the keyboard, and one hand on the mouse. However, I don't always remember what shortcuts are applicable in which mode, so I like the menu to show the shortcuts.

To implement menus and…

I've always loved the concept of skinned mesh - skeletal animation. The mathematical basis really appeals to me. I remember the first time I got a DX9 application working with Frank Luna's skinned mesh class as a basis, and seeing Tiny walking, waving, etc. I had examined the DXSDK skinned mesh exa…