Chapter 6. Playing with Animation

In this chapter we will cover:

• Applying animation with SkinnedEffect

• Motion capture with Kinect

• Integrating rag doll physics

• Rendering crowds

Introduction

A quick review of any of the major modeling packages, along with a number of popular helper libraries, will confirm that the animation of 3D models is both a common and popular requirement in games production.

Given that the main task of animation is covered elsewhere so regularly, this chapter takes a slightly different approach by highlighting what lies at the foundation of some common animation techniques; namely two different ways of generating it, how it can be applied to one or many models in a performant fashion.