well DarkBasic Professional is capable of using any format you choose thanks to the memblocks and soon to be released TPC SDK 1.2 which will include DBO everything will be comverted to FVF anyways on import - so really the format you choose doesn't depend on what is there you can develop it to suit YOUR needs.
when the new SDK hits you can have it import with the 'load object' command which is already inplace or with any other command you want.
you want the animation to use a skeleton you code the skeleton format which can be translated how you see it ... that is the 3D power that DarkBasic has offered since Enhanced was release 2years ago.
a perfect format for use which has the best depth is GLM (Ghoul2) developed by Raven Software... it supports weighted skeletal animation as well as capped limb points to a standard skeleton setup, this makes it probably THE best option for what you're going after to achieve. However the format as it stands is still heavily based on Quake3 format and it would be better to take what is within this format and apply it to another simpler format, suchas FVF/DirectX Mesh format ... if only the LOD mesh are present then thats cool, and what would be even better to use FVF as the base is that users can then use the LOD commands to set the polygon count within the model to thier needs without relying upon an artist to take the count down.
now this format is pretty standard setup, using
dword version (338)
dword byte/vertex (36)
dword numVertex (n|a)
actual data is layed out
float x position
float y position
float z position
float normal x
float normal y
float normal z
dword vertex colour
float texture u
float texture v
you then have a triangled face per every 3 vertex...
so if you're face is vertex 1,4,8 in the editor you'd export those vertex in that order in the data, so the min size of any mesh is 118bytes + header of 12bytes
makes it a very SMALL format... the skeletons because weighted wouldn't have to be attached to the vertex themselves, you want to change the size/height of the model you'd then change the scale of the skeleton and vertex data - making sure to also scale the tollerance and area of influence on the weights of each bone
if you setup the bones to affect each section of the mesh with a tag, add to the header the tag of the mesh you can then have the bones for each section affect that, but making sure the mesh is still a single deal - so you get the effect of a heirachy animation for each section but you also have all of the vertex around also edit the points.
so if you twist the neck only the neck will move + the child limbs which would obviously affect the head, however it won't effect the shoulder vertex even slightly.
(^_^) there is so much to 3d modeling beside the actual development which is decided to accomidate exactly what is to go into a format, you make what you need to produce the results
Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
