Real-time 3D Character Animation with Visual C++

7	Setting up a single mesh character

If your character was a jointed robot then you could set it up so that each individual part that moves is a separate object. Then you will need some way of informing your transformation code that a bicep is connected to a shoulder, a forearm is connected to the bicep and a hand is connected to the forearm. In this chapter we will consider how you can set up hierarchies of objects so that rotating and transforming the object will affect not only the object itself, but also those other objects that are connected to it. But we need to go further than this; we want to be able to deform a character so that the rendered result will appear as a single mesh. If we attempt to display an organic character using ...