Applying animation with SkinnedEffect
The XNA framework comes pre-bundled with an effect that allows the GPU to take a fair portion of the burden of animating meshes away from the CPU. There are freely available examples, both from Microsoft and others, on how to import animation data from various modeling packages into a format suitable for XNA and said effect.
One aspect that I haven't seen covered in quite as much detail is how one actually interacts with such an effect in the simplest possible manner and how the effect manages to do what it does.
The chapter will hopefully fill both gaps.
Getting ready
This example utilizes the GeometricBuffer classes detailed in the procedural modeling recipes of Chapter 3, Procedural Modeling, but any library or modeling package that can deal with a mesh constructed from a custom vertex type will do.
How to do it...
To begin your exploration of the SkinnedEffect:
1. Add a new vertex type that includes weighting information:
public struct VertexPositionNormalTextureWeightBlend...
