Quote: "The operational workings of BonePalette elude me."
Me too.
I believe the number relates either to the maximum length of any given bone heirarchy in your model or to the total number of bones in the model - or perhaps something else entirely. It's an upper limit of some sort so if 32 works for your model then leave it at 32 - but more complicated models might need 60 (and I believe that is the maximum value which DBPro supports). You could just experiment with different vales and see what happens.
Edit You could have a look at the MS DX9 docs. Here's an extract from my copy of the SDK:
Quote: "
Rendering with Fixed-Function Non-Indexed Skinning
When this skinning technique is active, the device can load up to four world matrices at a time and transform the vertices influenced by those four matrices. After these vertices are rendered, a different set of matrices can be loaded, and vertices influenced by the second set of matrices can be rendered. This rendering process continues until all faces of the mesh are rendered. GenerateSkinnedMesh calls ID3DXSkinInfo::ConvertToBlendedMesh which divides a mesh's faces into attribute groups. Each attribute group identifies geometry influenced by a particular set of four matrices. At render time, each attribute group can be rendered with a single IDirect3DDevice9:
rawIndexedPrimitive.
For non-indexed skinning, DrawMeshContainer loops through each attribute group in the mesh and renders one attribute group at a time. The mesh is set up so that each attribute group is influenced by up to four matrices. Before the vertices can be sent to the device, the influencing matrices first need to be sent to the device. To set the matrices, IDirect3DDevice9::SetTransform is called with the transformation type D3DTS_WORLDMATRIX(i), where i ranges from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 3. The matrices that the function sends to the device for a particular attribute group are obtained from pBoneCombinationBuf of the mesh container. This member points to a buffer containing an array of type D3DXBONECOMBINATION. Each D3DXBONECOMBINATION identifies the bone matrices influencing this attribute group. With this information, the sample knows which four matrices to load on the device to properly render an attribute group. Before actually setting the matrices, however, the matrices need to have the bone offset matrices applied to them. Recall that bone offset matrices transform the vertices from the mesh's default pose on the disk to the parent bone's frame of reference. Therefore, a matrix that gets sent to the device is the product of the bone matrix and the frame's combined transformation matrix. After loading the matrices, the faces of the attribute group can be rendered by calling ID3DXBaseMesh:
rawSubset.
Rendering with Fixed-Function Indexed Skinning
With the fixed-function indexed skinning, the device has a matrix palette. The size of the palette can be obtained from the device capability information. The application can load as many matrices as the palette could hold. Each vertex in the mesh has up to four indices to identify the matrices in the palette that influence the vertex. In the sample, the code uses a maximum 12-matrix palette. Using a larger palette is more efficient, but using a smaller palette makes the code compatible with more devices. To obtain a mesh suitable for indexed skinning, GenerateSkinnedMesh calls ID3DXSkinInfo::ConvertToIndexedBlendedMesh (which is similar to ID3DXSkinInfo::ConvertToBlendedMesh) but it takes a palette size and divides the mesh vertices into attribute groups to work with the matrix palette. Each attribute group is influenced by one specific set of matrices that can fit in the palette, and can be drawn with a single IDirect3DDevice9:
rawIndexedPrimitive.
The render code for indexed skinning looks extremely similar to the non-indexed case. GenerateSkinnedMesh loops through the attribute groups and sets up the matrices to send to the device, just as it would for non-indexed skinning. Here, each attribute group identifies the vertices influenced by a particular set of matrices in the palette. In the D3DXBONECOMBINATION array, each element identifies the bone matrices with which to load the palette when rendering this attribute group. After the matrices are set, this attribute group's faces are rendered with a call to ID3DXBaseMesh:
rawSubset."
Edit2 I see the forum engine has replaced ": D" (with no space
) with this "
".
Can't have everything I suppose.
