[Kde-games-devel] Animated sprites in KDE Games (was Granatier)

[Matthew Woehlke]

Ian Wadham wrote:
> Blender (a 3-D modeler) has good support for animation art.  You can
> give a figure a skeleton (called an armature, for some reason).

Wiktionary defines armature as "(5) A supporting framework in a 
sculpture"... and I believe the term is also used in animatronics.

Besides, it really isn't a skeleton, it is a tree of IK joints. I can't 
say I've seen IK ribs yet ;-). So really, "armature" is a more correct term.

> So, if you want animated sprites in SVG the artist must draw every
> frame individually.

Which is the way things have been done up until Half Life, after all, 
and how "effects" are /still/ done if they aren't using particle 
systems. (And last I checked, frame-based fireballs still look better 
than anything you could produce real-time on a typical desktop with 
currently known algorithms.)

It does mean a lot of work for walking animations, though, especially if 
you want enough frames for smooth motion.

-- 
Matthew
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