   Mesh Animation
  I have been searching around for tutorials and haven't been able to dig up anything on this subject. I'm trying to animate several mesh objects moving around and deforming, and I know where the bones would need to go and what vertices the bones would need to influence, but the thing is I'm importing .obj files that don't have weight or bone information. Is there anyway I could create a SkinMesh type Mesh from the Mesh object I build after importing the .obj? All of the documentation I see is for importing .X files, but nothing on how to build the SkinMesh yourself. I'm using DX9.   
It might be possible to create your bones and weights yourself after importing, but going about this programatically should prove to be a pain. Modelling apps provide a graphical interface to set up the bones and the enveloppes to creating the weights and they help you create the frames in the animation as well. So you see, building the skinmesh manually is something you probably would want to avoid whenever possible.;  So I'm gathering. Even so, I'm still a little uncertain as to how one would go about writing a .fbx importer or something like that. Basically, if I can't use the .obj files then I'll need to use collada files, though I haven't researched this issue as extensively as I have with the .obj. I just can't seem to dig up documentation on how to declare the bones and their effected vertices.   ;Is there any reason you can't use the .X format? I know it isn't the best format out there, but it might be useful as a base to get things working quickly. If you really need a custom importer, your best bet is probably to find a good one for an arbitrary format and see how they set up their SkinMesh data using the DX API. An alternative might be to forego the whole DX way of doing things and just code your own stuff, which I reckon numerous importers/renderers do. The basics of rendering a skinned mesh with a SM2+ shader is rather straightforward, so the challenge lies in storing the data and 'playing' the animation transforms. It's a lot of work to be sure, but since this part of DX is sketchy at best, this might actually be easier to do than to shoehorn your data into the DX structures.Then again, I don't have any first-hand experience with this, so hopefully someone who does can chip in.;  I'll take a look around and see if I can pull apart someone elses importer and build my own from what I learn. The files are being provided to me as .obj but I could just convert them to .X in another piece of software, I suppose, but I've read that it's often a pain to get the .X importer working completely.   