Introduction

In this chapter, we will explore the creation of animated characters for the CryENGINE. We will also extensively cover the creation of different animations for a variety of asset types.

Animated characters are integral to any game as any time you want to have realistic-looking humans, aliens, or anything of that sort you need to be able to skin the asset's mesh to a skeleton. Once the mesh has been skinned then it can be exported to the engine as a .CHR. There is a second format, used mostly when dealing with vehicles and rigid body assets, which is called .CGA.

A character is a combination of geometry data that is attached to a skeletal hierarchy. Examples include a human body, a shark, an alien, a horse, or a rope. In this chapter, we will mainly be dealing with humans; however, keep in mind that most of these recipes can be applied to other types of assets.

Throughout this chapter, we will be dealing with the SDK sample files shipped with the CryENGINE3 SDK. With that said...