Is there any easy way to animate parts of a mesh differently? How would I simulate an animated mesh in an FPS? If the lower body can be standing, walking or running, and the upper body can be still, waving or shooting. Correct me if I'm wrong, the DirectX animation hierarchy applies to the entire mesh. When you call AdvanceTime, it updates every matrix in the hierarchy. Is there any way to update frames independently? My idea #1: Each animation frame has a name. If you know the name of the piece you wish to animate, you can update the animation controller for that piece. I can see this causing a little CPU overhead with multiple calls to AdvanceTime. My idea #2: Divide the mesh into multiple pieces. A humanoid mesh could have a lower body and an upper body. Or maybe it could divide the arms out as well so the mesh could wave with the left arm, shoot with the right arm, all while running. How do the pros do it? Any help is appreciated.

Yes, thats what I want to do. Can the DirectX animation controller do that? As I said before, AdvanceTime updates the entire hierarchy.

Bump.

Anybody have any good ideas for this? I'm guessing the DirectX animation controller will not help me with this. Do I have to do everything manually, based on the name of each hierarchy frame?