Entire books have been written explaining how best to create a 3D animated character; so, unsurprisingly, we won't be looking at how to actually produce an animated 3D model here. Indeed, my warning in the previous chapter about "programmer art" probably goes double for "programmer animation". For evidence to back this statement up, look no further than the graphics accompanying the example programs of this book, which are all examples of "programmer art" made by yours truly. I really should heed my own advice.
Anyway, with that tip hopefully now rammed home, let's see how we can export animation data from a 3D modeling package.
Exporting an animation requires a number of new file types to be exported. These will be discussed in detail later, but in short they are files that represent the skeleton, the skin, and the actual animations themselves. The following sections will show how to export this data.