   creating a model format
  Hi, I''m hacking away on my very own little engine, and things are starting to work out ok. Right now,I''m up to the point where I feel I need to have a solid modelformat to play with. I''ve been doing some 3ds loading through lib3ds and some other half-hearted attempts a while back. Now I want to do it the right way, or at least have fancy features there.I was wondering if anyone could help me point out some good resources about constructing a model format.  at least I want to have a good system for animation, probably through some kind of bones-setup.. I''ve heard of weighted vertices, but I''m unsure what this is, and what use it has. Please help me get educated if you have good tips    -My very first attempt at the age of 8."edline mygame.exe" 
  I think first of all you need to realize where your models are coming from. If you''re going to write an exporter for milkshape you can''t use weighted vertices. If you''re writing your own model editor then that is a differnt story. Your going need a list of vertices; a list of objects; a list of materials; a list of bones.Every "vertex" will need, location, bone id (or 2, plus weights), texture coordinates, normal. (at least)For every "object" you will need a list of indices, material index. (at least)For every "material" you will need like specular, diffuse, texture filename (or more), alpha values.For every "bone" you will need a position, a rotation, and animation frames. (this area is very mathematicaly advanced)I suggest you take a look at the Milkshape file (ms3d). Its a very nice skeletal animation file the only problem i think it has is that it only supports one bone per vertex.I hope that gives you a start.---As far as writing your own editor, i think you should make your format first, say like a model struct. Then your editor will just modify an instance of that and you can just dump that sucker in a file and use the same struct to load from the file (probably many structs).---Multiply bones equation:vertout = vertin * bone1matrix * bone1weight + vertin * bone2matrix * bone2weight ......I hope thats right. 