Animated meshes and sprites

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Animated meshes and sprites

_PJ_(Posted 2007) [#1]
Looking at the 'saveanimmesh' function created (I think by Beaker)

I had an idea, Im not too sure if it will work:

My meshes are basically static and non-animated. They're spacecraft. The only children are pivots (not necessary to be saved with the mesh) and some decal-type sprites for logos or animated lights (The animations on the lights makes them blink etc)

Would it be possible to use the function to save the meshes and sprites, so instead of having to animate all the sprite decals, I simply keep the meshes animated?

Thsi would appear to be a faster and more efficient approach.

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I understand its possible to make such things in 3d modellers, but I am truly hopeless with such tools, so this is why I'm considering this approach.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms, laughs?


Ross C(Posted 2007) [#2]
I'm not quite sure what u mean. You want to take a 2d snapshot of every frame of mesh animation?


_PJ_(Posted 2007) [#3]
No, Im basically wondering if Animated Sprites as 'children' of a parent mesh can somehow be 'recorded' (saved) with the mesh as an animated mesh...
Though, now I think about it, I'm beginning to seriously doubt it!


Ross C(Posted 2007) [#4]
You COULD:

Save the sprite as a pivot.
Store the information you want to save in the pivots EntityName. eg. number of frames, etc

Then when loading, you can just find child to get the pivot.

Example of the entityname:

"SPRITE-frames10-image'animatedspriteimage.png'"

Then simply extract the information from the pivot, create a sprite and use the information extracted to build the sprite.