   Exporting Animations
  I've had a hard time finding good resources about animation and its relation to programming. So I want to start a discussion about how you implement animation in your applications but foremost games.What I've used when I want any sort of animation, like a character or something like that, I use 3DS to create the actual model with mesh, texture all that stuff, then I started off using just mesh animation and exporting it as ASCII files thru MaxScript. But that lacks very much things, like performance, filesize, flexibility etc. So what I know that I need now is implementing skeletal animation with skinning instead, however so far I've not enough information to make that with MaxScript. Maybe I'll make it with the SDK from 3DS or finding the right resources for MaxScript.Enough from my side, I want to hear how you guys and women (if any :D), how you do. From the model, animation to the export the whole way to the import within your game or whatever it is.Best RegardsRikardo   
  Here's my way of doing it:I use Cinema4D and XNA.First I create my models in Cinema4D, maybe with textures. Everything else won't be done in C4D, not even phong tags. I export it to FBX, since this is a supported format of the XNA content pipeline, and the export in C4D is alright.The animations are done in my very own animation editor which is close to being finished. In there I load in the model with only the geometry, texture and normal data.The editor allows you to select vertices. Having a really basic button object I can then do stuff with the vertices, like adding a matrix and weighting values, which will be the process for skinning the model. The bones will of course be transformable in the editor and will be placed on a timeline. After the animating is done, I save the model with all the animation data in another model format, so I can then use it in my games. And there we are! :DIt might be a bit long way since it took me several months to get the animation editor so far, but it was a good exercise and helped a lot for seeing how drawing models works.   ;  I use my own little format for both models and skeletal anims. I wrote a milkshape exporter that I intend to port to MaxScript. I don`t make my own models, because I basically suck at modeling:P   ;  If you are using low poly models, you might consider using MilkShape3D.  You can import many different formats including several 3DS formats, and then export in the MS3D format when you are done.  The MS3D editor itself supports bone based animation, which it sounds like you want.  The MS3D file format natively stores the animation information in the file, and there is examples in their SDK about how to load the data as well.  Plus its pretty cheap too, which is always nice...   