Use Irrlicht for a non-interactive, machinima-like 3d app?

[hendu]

Certainly, if you code it.

[yannischris]

Ok, thanks for the useful advice!#I will surely give it a try, and see how it goes!

[mongoose7]

Yes. Either create an animation in a modeller which contains a walk cycle of, say, one second duration, followed by turning to the left (one second) and waving (one second). Then you can
1. Load the model and turn animation off.
2. After 10 seconds, loop the walk animation while moving the node (update the position each time through the render loop).
3. After a further five seconds, execute the head turning animation.
4. After a further one second, loop the hand waving animation.

You can also set this up in code, though, especially for the walk animation, it would be very difficult to do without the feedback from a modelling program (the legs may twist, the feet slide or lose contact with the floor, etc). So it is best to create animations in a modelling program and just cue them in Irrlicht.

[yannischris]

Yes I see what you mean. The thing is that I don't want to create the whole animation in a modeller because in that way, I don't need Irrlicht at all. What I need is to create atomic animations in the modeller (e.g. a walking cycle animation, a waving hand animation etc) and then being able to combine them in many ways through code in Irrlicht.

[mongoose7]

Well, it's possible. For example, viewtopic.php?f=1&t=43727&p=249310&hilit=skinned+animation#p249310. However, you'd be better off starting from an entirely different place. For example, (I haven't tried it but) OGRE has animation separate from meshes. And what's that other renderer, Hive3d, Huge3d, Hulk3d, hmmm, I think I've forgotten.

[yannischris]

So, mongoose7, if I understand correct, you suggest that OGRE will do it better (talking about the simultaneous downloads)?
Hendu said that I can code such functionality in Irrlicht..

[CuteAlien]

I don't know about OGRE support for this, but mixing and playing different animations for the same skeleton at the same time is indeed not supported so far in Irrlicht. Could be possible with some tricks maybe, not sure about that - but there's at least no easy way to do that for now. Sorry, 'bout that.

[yannischris]

Ok, thanks for the info!