sample details

Description:

This sample shows how to process and render a skinned character model using the XNA Framework Content Pipeline. 

New For XNA Game Studio 3.1: This sample has been updated for 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. This sample has been simplified by removing the ContentTypeWriter and ContentTypeReader classes, as these are no longer required.

Out of the box, the XNA Framework provides only partial support for animation. It defines an intermediate object model for storing animation data inside the Content Pipeline, and can import data into this object model from FBX and X formats. The built-in ModelProcessor also converts vertex channels of BoneWeightCollection data into pairs of channels with VertexElementUsage BlendIndices and BlendWeight, suitable for skinned rendering on the GPU. The framework does not include any run-time animation classes, however. That functionality is implemented by this sample.