Animation

Anyone have a good online tutorial on animation with meshes in DirectX?

A google search gives me dozens of sites, but I would like some opinions from some more experienced programmers.

D3DX provides an animation controller just for this purpose. There are several methods for animation from vertex tweening (linear interpolation between two vertex positions over time), animation keyframing (just like it sounds), and other techniques.

You would need a book to cover these concepts fully. But I will say that the D3DX library makes all of this a snap.

OK, So I have found a couple of tutorials on Keyframe Animation, but I am having trouble making sense of some of it. I have an allocation class derived from ID3DXALLOCATEHIERARCHY here

Code:

---

class CAllocateHierarchy: public ID3DXAllocateHierarchy
{
public:
    STDMETHOD(CreateFrame)(THIS_ LPCTSTR Name, LPD3DXFRAME *ppNewFrame);
    STDMETHOD(CreateMeshContainer)(THIS_ LPCTSTR Name,
                                  LPD3DXMESHDATA pMeshData,
                                  LPD3DXMATERIAL pMaterials,
                                  LPD3DXEFFECTINSTANCE pEffectInstances,
                                  DWORD NumMaterials,
                                  DWORD *pAdjacency,
                                  LPD3DXSKININFO pSkinInfo,
                                  LPD3DXMESHCONTAINER *ppNewMeshContainer);
    STDMETHOD(DestroyFrame)(THIS_ LPD3DXFRAME pFrameToFree);
    STDMETHOD(DestroyMeshContainer)(THIS_ LPD3DXMESHCONTAINER pMeshContainerBase);
};

---

and I have a CModel class that handles the loading, rendering, ect... of the mesh. Here is where I load the mesh

Code:

---

void CModel::LoadXFile(char* strFileName)
{
    //Allocation class
    CAllocateHierarchy Alloc;

    //Load the mesh
    if(FAILED(D3DXLoadMeshHierarchyFromX(strFileName,      // File load
                                        D3DXMESH_MANAGED,  // Load Options
                                        m_pd3dDevice,      // D3D Device
                                        &Alloc,            // Hierarchy allocation class
                                        NULL,              // NO Effects
                                        &m_pFrameRoot,      // Frame hierarchy
                                        &m_pAnimController)))// Animation Controller
    {
        MessageBox(NULL, strFileName, "Model Load Error", MB_OK);
    }

    if(m_pAnimController)
        m_dwAnimationSetCount = m_pAnimController->GetMaxNumAnimationSets();

    if(m_pFrameRoot)
    {
        //Set the bones up
        SetupBoneMatrices((LPFRAME)m_pFrameRoot, NULL);

        //Setup the bone matrices array
        m_pBoneMatrices  = new D3DXMATRIX[m_uMaxBones];
        ZeroMemory(m_pBoneMatrices, sizeof(D3DXMATRIX)*m_uMaxBones);

        //Calculate the Bounding Sphere
        D3DXFrameCalculateBoundingSphere(m_pFrameRoot, &m_vecCenter, &m_fRadius);
    }
}

---

In red above I get an error

Code:

---

cannot declare variable `Alloc' to be of type `CAllocateHierarchy'
since type `CAllocateHierarchy' has abstract virtual functions

---

I am still kinda fuzzy when it comes to virtual functions. I tried removing the virtual tags from the functions in my derived class but I still get the same error.

I'm kinda stuck here, any help would be appreciated.

This is just a guess, but try:

Code:

---

virtual CAllocateHierarchy Alloc;

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I don't know if this will work, it's just a guess, i've never done mesh drawing and such before.