Hi! I''am new, and french so, scuse my english! I had some questions about animation in D3DRM. Firstly, the base of the problem is my doubts about the AnimationSet interface. Firstly i thought that it was possible to assign to a mesh builder a AnimationSet. I thought that mesh was only 3d object, and animation only a sequence of keys. I believe now, that AnimationSet seems already to be, or already containing, 3d object specifications. Is that right? AnimationSet is not only "keys"? (I think now, coz'' an animation can be a visual, right?) That mean that for each object that use the same Animation i need one AnimationSet Object, duplicate in memory? And what about load? why is it necessary to pass a mesh in parameter, must be empty? it''s only to fill it? And what about cloning? in fact, is there always "object animation" instead of "object" and "animation assigned"? so "clone an AnimationSet", means clone animation, and if it''s the same? After IM, RM appears me easy to code... but seems also "strange" in his memory occupation... if what i said is right. I really need explication about it. Thanks a lot!!! VL''H.

I used to work in dx3drm a while ago, and I think I can help you a bit...
Well, the animation is stored in the same file you load,

what the animation is in reality is a series of instructions, that say how to tranform rotate and scale a certain segment of your model, so it looks a certain way.

However you need to load the frame(as I remember thats is name) containing the animation in a certain way so the animations keys are also loaded, then you can animate the model to a certain key by simply using an instruction. The reason why microsoft choose the name "frame" for a model, and "key" for an animation frame, is simply... to make it more confusing... microsoft is working for you...

To see this at work, simply use the X viewer code, there is one function for each type of structure, mesh, frame and animation, also it says how to animate it.

However, after having used DX3DRM for quite a while and basically reaching its limits, I can tell you this, try to avoid it, unless you are thinking in a really simple project like a vrml viewer, it will leave you hanging in the midle of your project theres one point in which it becomes incredibly slow, this is because it hogs memory like nobodies business. also the system itself is confusing, bloated and not really optimized.

If you already know how to handle IM try to implement animation by yourself, dx3drm is simply not worth it. trust me.

Thanks a lot.
But, i have some others questions for you.
Answer me, please, if the subject don''t make you be nervous...

Just about in IM, i have work with it, to have objects, to light them, and so on...
But as with RM, i had problems with animations (not animations defined by programs, but defined in 3DS File), and i wanted to try RM, to try to work a lot more quickly.
To explain my choice of RM, i can also say that, for the moment, the speed in not a important factor for me.

To become to my problem, i want to explain it to you a little bit more.
In fact, i haven''t any problem to animate ONE object, with his animation.
i have load it by AnimationSet->Load, add it to a frame, and can make some AnimationSet->SetTime to animate it.
But in fact, i don''t know why it works!
if AnimationSets is only, as you said : a succession of transform, etc... what i believed too, where is the object in the loaded frame?
i want to load only animation, not object! and what is the nature of this object? mesh? meshbuilder? frame? (for me a frame is not an object).
As you see, i don''t understand nothing...

And, in fact, what i wanted, it''s to clone my object, clone his animation (only if necessary because, it''s the same that for the first), and animate my objects separately, (i want to "decal" their time).
As you said, i look the X Viewer code.
My first suprise was for the release of the frames, and the visuals, after a load, so, is the AddVisual make also a copy of the frame and the wisual for the "destination" frame?
But i haven''t found informations about the cloning of animations.
Another thing: i have try to clone AnimationSet, and when i make a GetAnimation on my clone, i have zero in the counter of animation, instead of two when i make it with the source...
i seams have seen, in the viewer, that the better is to clone a frame, clone his visuals, and make again an AddVisual to the cloned frame, but with AnimationSet, the cloning, as i have said, don''t work with my code.
i wanted to extract animation from animationset and clone them to re-AddVisual them to a cloned frame but...
i have tried a lot of others methods, and i don''t want to load n times, and... no results!

Another thing: To clone a frame? is that clone Visuals too? seemly not.
I search info about the clone method...

However, thanks a lot to have answer me, perhaps that i''m going to let RM a moment to becom to IM, but i don''t like not understand!


VL''H.