   Handling disconnected bones with .X files
  I'm using Blender to make a skinned mesh, and working to improve the .X exporter that ships with it. I've realised that until now, I've only ever worked with skinned meshes where every bone is connected to its parent (e.g. the start of the upper arm bone touches the end of the shoulder bone, the start of the forearm bone touches the end of the upper arm bone).However, Blender lets you create skeletons with bones that are not connected - you could have a gap between the end of one bone and the start of its child bones. I'm having troubles exporting, and wondering if this is the cause of my problems? Does anybody know if the built in .X loader could handle such cases? Any pointers on what modifications would be necessary?Thanks a lot,Andy   
  I'm thinking of tackling this by introducing additional "dummy" frames in between the disconnected bones. Does anybody have any thoughts on whether this is a good idea?   ;  Hmm... Well it turns that that this actually wasn't the problem at all, and no special code was required to correctly handle these disconnected bones. The problem lay elsewhere in my exporter, and is now all working properly.   ;  what do you mean with disconnected? your hierarchy has frames anwyway, bones are no objects :D your vertices get transformed by your frame hierarchy matrices, the bones are only rendered in e.g. 3ds max so you can see how the skeleton would look like. but in the end they are just matrices, what else should they be :D^^your bones = transform matricesyour mesh  = your rendered stuff   ;Quote:Original post by of_ownagewhat do you mean with disconnected? your hierarchy has frames anwyway, bones are no objects :D That's what the picture was to demonstrate: they are disconnected in the sense that the tail of one bone doesn't coincide with the head of the next bone.But anyway, I guess you're right, it just affects the posing process, the actual maths of it all just comes out in the wash and makes no difference.   