news details
XNA Game Studio 3.1: New and Updated Samples!
News
submitted
7/7/2009
The XNA Team has provided updates to a number of educational resources for XNA Game Studio 3.1, as well as new samples for one of our latest features, Avatars!
Newly Added
Object Placement on Avatar
First installment in our avatar sample series, by the avatar maestro himself, Dean Johnson! This sample demonstrates how to find the world space transform that is needed to draw a baseball bat in the avatar's right hand.
Avatar Multiple Animations Sample
In this sample we demonstrate how to play two of the built in avatar animations at the same time. The celebrate animation is used on most of the body while we play the wave animation on just the avatar’s right arm.
Avatar Animation Blending Sample
This sample demonstrates how to blend between two animations over a fixed period of time. Once a new animation is selected by the user, the new target animation is blended into the current animation over the period of a quarter of a second.
Updated
The following samples have been updated for XNA Game Studio 3.1 to make use of the new automatic .xnb serialization mechanism. The ContentTypeWriter and ContentTypeReader helper classes used by previous versions of Game Studio are no longer required (although they still work the same way as before if they are included). If these helpers are not provided, the Content Pipeline will now automatically serialize custom data types using reflection. These samples have been simplified by removing the ContentTypeWriter and ContentTypeReader classes, as these are no longer required.
Newly Added
Object Placement on Avatar
First installment in our avatar sample series, by the avatar maestro himself, Dean Johnson! This sample demonstrates how to find the world space transform that is needed to draw a baseball bat in the avatar's right hand.
Avatar Multiple Animations Sample
In this sample we demonstrate how to play two of the built in avatar animations at the same time. The celebrate animation is used on most of the body while we play the wave animation on just the avatar’s right arm.
Avatar Animation Blending Sample
This sample demonstrates how to blend between two animations over a fixed period of time. Once a new animation is selected by the user, the new target animation is blended into the current animation over the period of a quarter of a second.
Updated
The following samples have been updated for XNA Game Studio 3.1 to make use of the new automatic .xnb serialization mechanism. The ContentTypeWriter and ContentTypeReader helper classes used by previous versions of Game Studio are no longer required (although they still work the same way as before if they are included). If these helpers are not provided, the Content Pipeline will now automatically serialize custom data types using reflection. These samples have been simplified by removing the ContentTypeWriter and ContentTypeReader classes, as these are no longer required.
- Custom Model Class Sample
- This sample shows how to go beyond the limits of the Model class that comes built in to the XNA Framework, loading geometry data into a custom class that can be extended more easily to cope with specialized requirements.
- Generated Geometry Sample
- This sample shows how 3D models can be generated by code during the XNA Content Pipeline build process.
- Mesh Instancing Sample
- This sample shows how to efficiently render many copies of the same model, using GPU instancing techniques to reduce the cost of repeated draw calls.
- Skinned Model Sample
- This sample shows how to process and render a skinned character model using the XNA Framework Content Pipeline.
- Sprite Sheet Sample
- This sample shows how to implement sprite sheets, combining many separate sprite images into a single larger texture that will be more efficient for the graphics card.
- Authoring Particle Systems Using XML and the Content Pipeline
- This tutorial teaches you how to extend the Particle 3D sample so the particle systems are defined by XML files loaded with the XNA Content Pipeline.
Check out the Educational Catalog for additional samples, tutorials, starter kits and utilities!
