Skeletal animation

The last animation technique that we'll briefly talk about will be skeletal animation.

Note

There are also other techniques used for animation. However, the three that we will be reviewing in this chapter are the most commonly used ones. Also, we will be reviewing skeletal animation from the point of view of 2D games. In the 3D games world, it is a bit different.

The skeletal animation technique is a try to get both of the two worlds: controlled movement as in frame-based animation and ability to create any required amount of intermediate frames as in the action-based technique.

Using this technique, you can create pretty complicated animations without lots of frame images. Of course, you might still be able to create a better animation using frame-based animation, but in some cases, when you simply cannot create frame-based animation for every situation, skeletal animation is the only solution.

Here is how it works. Instead of one image, you split your animated game object...