Question

I’m new in 3D games developing so I have kinda dummy question – how to move a mesh in 3D engine (under moving I mean a walking animation). And how to dress some skin on it?

What I have:

1. open source 3D OpenGL engine – NinevehGL http://nineveh.gl/. It’s super easy to load a mesh
   to. I’ pretty sure it will be awesome engine when it will be released!
2. a mesh model of the human.
   http://www.2shared.com/file/RTBEvSbf/female.html (it’s mesh of a
   female that I downloaded from some open source web site..)
3. found a
   web site from which I can download skeleton animation in
   formats:
   dao (COLLADA) , XML , BVH (?) – http://www.animeeple.com/details/bcd6ac4b-ebc9-465e-9233-ed0220387fb9
4. what I stuck on (see attached image)

So, how can I join all these things and make simple game when dressed human will walk forward and backward?

Answer 1

The problem is difficult to answer, because it would require knowledge of the engine’s API. Also you can’t just stick a skeletal animation onto some mesh. You need some connection between both, a process called rigging, in which you add “bones” (also called armatures) to the mesh. This is an artistic process, done in a 3D modeller. Then you need to implement a skeletal animation system, which is a far too complex task to answer in a single Stackoverflow answer (it involves animation curve evaluation, quaternion interpolation, skinning matrices, etc.).

You should break down your question into smaller pieces.