Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!scea!peter_alau@playstation.sony.com
From: "Steve Spiller" <steve@microdot.com>
Newsgroups: scea.yaroze.programming.3d_graphics
Subject: 3D "How-To" Q's
Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:22:12 -0700
Organization: SCEA News Server
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Hello all,
Let me introduce myself, since I'm a fairly new member of the Yaroze
community.  I'm a developer specialized in Windows COM-based distributed
systems and ActiveX controls, so please forgive me my handicap while I ask
the following questions.  This is my first foray into 3D programming and my
first real effort at designing games.

First of all, Camera Movement.
I'm working on a 3/4 view 3rd person game and was wondering how camera
movement is usually handled.  Do you keep the world static and move the
camera through it, do you setup a game object (player) to be the parent of
the camera so it moves around with it, or do you move the world around the
camera?  Looking through tons of doc and code from the SCEA/SCEE sites, I'm
still confused on this issue. :)

Second, 3D Object Animation.
If I'm trying to animate a humanoid character, what's the best/easiest way?
Should I have models for each of the different positions, create seperate
models for each jointed segment and setup an object hierarchy where I can
just rotate the "limbs", or create a single object and modify verticies
directly (if that can be done)?

I'm not exactly looking for exact answers here.  I'd like to see opinions
and ideas on these subjects and any other game engine design issues.  Most
of the docs I've found are great at explaining the how-to's of the techinal
stuff (Pete Passmore's 3D tutorial, James Russell's Vector and Matrices
tutorial) which is most excellent, but I haven't found much on how this
stuff is used in relation to game engine design.

Thank you,
Steve