quote: what info does md2 contain thats not useful to hardware? it contains "opengl commands" (really just hardware accelerated setup of the model) triangle strips and fans for the model.
.md2 also contains triangle data which duplicates what can be obtained from the gl command list, which was optimization for software rendering I think. Whether the latest tools actually write this info or not I can''t say but there are certainly structures for it, I think of .md3 as cleaner from a hardware pushing perspective, even if it does contain more info.
quote:Original post by Luctus But what about the bones animation? what is the pros/cons using bones instead of vertex animation? The only thing I could see is the possibility to use the same animation on several different models with same bone setup.
-Luctus
Forward and inverse Kinematics. Animation Blending.
Luctus anyone who speaks englaish and understands grammer realizees that your sentence "Also, since the sourcecode of q2 is officially publiced, can I use it freely in my project? "
"it" refers to the last subject of a sentence. in this case, that would be "sourcecode of q2". dont use it, and you wont have problems with that.
JuNC, the indexed triangle list renders fast on hardware as well. it was meant for models in which the triangle strips and fans may add overhead (ie due to model complexity its difficult to create the strips/fans that are efficent). if i am not mistaken md3s contain this indexed triangle list as well. also normals are stored with the triangle list as well. furthermore only the gl commands point to indicies of the triangle list anyway. so the only thing duplicated is the skin mappings. since you would need to look at the original vertex list so you could see the normals (they may be smoothed in a special way so certain groups stay faceted).
the indexed triangle list is not a waste since its mapping texture coordinates as well. its also important to point out that some modellers may not create a decent set of triangle fans/strips. you can also apply LOD if you want using subdivision techniques and the indexed triangle list.
md3 is not any cleaner from a hardware perspective, just adds more features.
boned animation is great, it allows better looking animation and blending of frames that cant be done well dynamically using other techniques. it also allows savings in ram since you only store the bone movement not the actual vertices positions. it also allows swapping of animated bones and models provided the skeletons are setup the same (ie same number of bones and reletive positions). though you could use boned animation to create md2 models, you just dont have access to the bone data at runtime. also boned animation allows things like breaking a seection of the mesh off (ie a bone group) and then stil be able to animate the rest of the mesh correctly. for instance you could shoot a hat off or an arm. it also allows spiffy procedural animation for things like pony tails. some of the benefits though are at content creation time which means you can use bones with either format.
another neat trick with boned animated models is through them around like rag dolls and use physics to control bone movement (ie trespasser, hitman and upcoming ut 2003).
the realize with md3 only the connections between torso, legs, head, and other md3 pieces are animated using bones. ie so that legs/torso/etc stay together properly. the actual animation for the pieces is standard vertex animation.
