Animated object

[bLAZY]

Hi,

I'd like to add to my world a character which should be animated. The animation is all the time repeated, it's kind of waving plane. How to do such a thing with Blender. I tryed to make a simple cube animation to test it this way: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/08/31/blender-intro-to-animation/. But I saw that simple loading 3ds object like in Wiki doesn't make animation. How to force it to animate?

[EgonOlsen]

It depends what you mean when you say "animation". If you mean moving, rotating and scaling objects...this is done in code. If you mean animation that actually alters the mesh, you have bascially three options:

• Use keyframe animations. Either export your animation in MD2 format or create it from single 3ds/obj files. The forum and maybe the wiki should information on this.
• Use skeletal animation...use Bones. Information can be found in the Bones forum.
• ...another option is to use an IVertexController to modify the mesh in code. This is an example of it: http://www.jpct.net/forum2/index.php/topic,1885.msg13838.html#msg13838

[bLAZY]

Thans for answer.
So I would like to use keyframe animation. What is better, MD2 or 3DS, if i'd like then to use serialization to have that animation on android? Or there is no difference?

[Marlon]

I suggest you to export your 3D model as a md2 file with the help of blender.
You will then need a md2.txt file, where you give information about the object and its keyframes.
For example if you have a character, which has 2 animations (move=4 frames and idle=2 frames) your file should look like this:
# MD2 Frame Name List
"nothing" 1
"move" 4
"idle" 2