   Animating 3d w/ multiple animation files
  I am working with a team who has a number files that are used to animate the main character in a game.  The game we are going to make will use this same character and code it in XNA.  The problem is every animation is in its own .fbx file, and in order to use different animation, I think I will have to load each file and run each individual file every time the character needs to do a different animation.Anyone have any thoughts on this, or have heard of this kind of setup before?Thanks.   
  You will normally have all the player's animation already loaded and in memory.  So multiple "files" doesn't really matter since you'll often load that all in to a blend tree of some sort or another.A typical solution to managing complex animation is to partition the skeleton (often just upper and lower body, but sometimes many more components) then you can have separate anims running on, for instance, the torso and the legs.  Additionally you can "play" multiple animations at the same time on the same partition and blend between them.Blending animation is typically just an additive blend of the deltas from the current base pose.  Sometimes you have to do some fixup to control rogue limbs and whatnot.There was a great talk at GDC from the Uncharted guys about how the designed their animation system for Uncharted 2.  I can't find the audio/video for the talk but you can find the powerpoint here (You want "Animation and Player Control in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune...")http://www.gdcvault.com/showConference.php?category=top&type=3-me   ;  I would basically have to load every file, I understand that.  But is this typical to render a different model with a specific animation every time?  Example the character fires a gun, I have to render that animation/model.  If the character dies, then I would have to render that model with the specific animation and run that.This just seems very inefficient, and a little crazy.  This isn't a typical setup right?  I've always had all my animations in one file/skeleton, so just think this is kind of weird.   ;  You should store your models and their animations separately. Generally, you have one model file, and many animation files for the model. In Max/Maya you can choose to only export animation, and not model data. Then, at run-time you can load all the animations and merge them into one list of animations for that model (or however you store your animations).In your example, you would only have one character model, and you would have separate animation files that contain the gun animation and dying animation (in the same file, or in separate files).   