   Model file format that supports skeletal animation and skinning?
  I know this question gets asked about 3 times a week, but I have yet to see a good answer (except maybe one, see below) so I'm asking again.Does anyone know of a model file format, except for MD5, that supports skeletal animation and skinning? In particular, it should support several bone influences per-vertex (so ms3d is out). Of course its specs should be available somewhere so that I can write a loader for it (I don't want to use an animation library, I want to do all the animation/skinning myself).Thanks in advance.   
Quote:Original post by Gage64Does anyone know of a model file format, except for MD5, that supports skeletal animation and skinning? In particular, it should support several bone influences per-vertex (so ms3d is out). Of course its specs should be available somewhere so that I can write a loader for it (I don't want to use an animation library, I want to do all the animation/skinning myself).Collada or FBX would both be reasonable choices. However, both are intermediate formats, rather than efficient runtime formats, so you will want to convert them to a custom format for the final game.And just for the hell of it, there is also verse [wink]   ;  .3DS gametutorials.com has a tutorial on reading itThough you'll probably need to use 3DS max to preserve the animation data.I use my own exporter in 3ds max. Works out really nicely.   ;  It is safe to say that file formats from every major FPS game has skeletal support but you need to know their format.There are other formats like milkshape and the directX .X format but the best is your own format.;  AFAIK, 3DS doesn't contain any bone data.I don't think the specs for FBX are available anywhere.From an article I read, it seems that the vertices in an X file don't contain any weights or bone indices. This data needs to be generated using ID3DXSkinInfo::ConvertToIndexedBlendedMesh(). I guess I can use the D3DX functions to load an X file, generate the necessary data, and then save the data to a simple to use file format (which I'll define myself), but it would be nice to have a format that already contains all the necessary data.I'll look into Collada.Any other suggestions are welcome.   ;  I'm pretty sure it does. Though the bones may just be scene objects with no geom information and their keyframes and data should be sub objects.;  Hey I was wondering... what's wrong with the md5 format?   ;Quote:Original post by bzroomI'm pretty sure it does. Though the bones may just be scene objects with no geom information and their keyframes and data should be sub objects.3DS definitely does not support skeletal animation. It supports basic hierarchical keyframe animation, so you would get get bones moving around (as geometry) but you would completely lose all the skinning information (ie: which bones influence which vertices and the weight of the influence.) which would make it useless.3DS is an ancient format, it comes from before 3dsMax was even invented, when 3d Studio was still called 3d Studio, and before bones even existed. It's just a legacy format that Max still supports, and without support for skinning, normals, multiple UV sets, etc it's not much use for games.   ;  For OP.My advice, stay away from COLLADA. Is amazing how none of the importers/exporters fallow the design papers. Not counting the numbers or bugs and the pain to get a 3D model with animations out from it.Probable FBX could be a better alternative.Or, pick a decent DCC tool with a nice API who support FBX as exchange format, and write your own exporter for it.   ;  3ds doesnt support boneshalf life models are another one, one of these days Im  gonna get round to writing a load for it   