I need to store collision data for a rag doll object with joints and stuff. I have a pretty good understanding of how bones and joints work but I'm not sure how to save the shape of each bone. I believe the source engine just uses boxes for this and it seems to be acceptable but the objects I will be using are not limited to props or actors. I need to save the data for buildings, people, vehicles and props. I think the way Oblivion or Fallout 3 saves collision data would be a little closer to what I need, also should I save the collision data in a separate file or inside the mesh it's self. I will also need an idea of how I should save such data, I'm currently using a max plugin I wrote to save meshes. So whats your thoughts on how this should work?

So I've been thinking hard and I can't think of a way to unify this into a class, logic or data structure. So should the creation of the rigged actors in a physics scene be handled though a script?

Basic concept would be commands that create an actor from a mesh for things like buildings or you can create boxes and rig them together then bind them to the bones of a mesh to create things like ragdolls, basically give the functionality of the physics engine to a script.

Is that the standard way game engines do it? Can anyone explain how game engines like the source engine, Oblivion/ Fallout 3 engine, Cry engine and all those other game engine normally handle the storing / construction of collision data?

Has anyone modded any of those engines and have an idea how they store and construct collision data?

Seems like most game engines are using the quake logic though I was hoping there was a slightly more unified way instead of having a prop file format and a map file format.