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DirectX Tool Kit Vertex Skinning Update

github

Chuck Walbourn -

Back when I first implemented the Model class for DirectX Tool Kit, I was focused on having some basic mesh rendering for samples and demos. As such, while I supported creating SkinnedEffect materials for models with vertex bone information, I didn’t have much else there to support implementing vertex skinning animation, or even rigid-body animation. I have been meaning to get back finishing that work for 5+ years.

October is Hackathon time for Microsoft, so I went back and dusted off a bunch of prototype work over the years and finally got it implemented.

The current releases of DirectX Tool Kit for DX11 / DX12 now include:

  • ModelBone loading from CMO and SDKMESH geometry formats

  • Rigid-body animation (supported by SDKMESH)

  • Vertex-skinned animation (supported by CMO and SDKMESH)

  • In addition to the original SkinnedEffect (i.e. XNA Game Studio 4 BasicEffect with vertex skinning), there is now SkinnedNormalMapEffect and SkinnedPBREffect.

  • For the DirectX 11 version of DirectX Tool Kit, the skinning support in DGSLEffect was moved to a SkinnedDGSLEffect.

Tutorials are available for DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 on the GitHub wikis.

As with XNA Game Studio, the tool kit doesn’t include a specific animation system but I’ve got sample ones available as utility code for both CMO and SDKMESH animation data.

Related: September 2021