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

10	Importing geometry and animation from Lightwave 3D

No man is an island as the saying goes, and this is undoubtedly true of real-time character animation. In order to produce effective real-time character animation you are likely to need to use many application programs as tools. The kinds of tools you will need are likely to include: a good bitmap editor such as Paint Shop Pro to create the texture maps that are so essential for the look of low polygon characters; a level editor to create the real-time content; and a modelling program. In this chapter we look in detail at how we can use data created by one important tool, Lightwave 3D, in our own application.

Lightwave 3D scene files are simple text files that define how objects appear ...