animating a mesh...

Are you interested in how to go about coding the bones? Or how to use them inside your modeller?

Just both

Bones are created from the Create Panel, Systems tab in Max. 3D Studios' documentation is written for children, so a quick search for bones in there will be like reading a bible for using bones.

So first you create the bones, then you apply Physique. That is, if you are making a skinned mesh? If not, why even use bones for something so simple? Just use the translation transforms for the feet to make bones in the game.

As for Physique, ah man that part is a nightmare. But since you're just making a kirby, it should be simple. Just activate it using rigid deformations. Tweak the settings, then export.

As for parsing this stuff in an x file, there are a lot of tutorials up now. There are some here on gamedev.

Hi,
Maybe i've explained bad like my usual...
I know how create bones, but i don't know how apply to a mesh for a game animation, i explain better:
If i simulate a walking i must move the character on... but to moving it in the game i have to traslate it. So the animation of the mesh in 3dsmax is just for the feet (movement) body (up and down) but not go on. isn't it?
Now, if my walking i simple and i can just rotate the feet and move just a bit the body to simulate the movement, can i make a simple animation in this way or i need to use bone math to implement it in a game?

You're saying you just want to make him walk? That's it? No hand movements, nothing else? Leave the body and legs as seperate meshes. Just animate the scene in max and export. You can always apply X-Form on the feet to make their rotations relative to the ball. When you parse for kirby, load the seperated mesh animations in with him. The rotations will be world space once exported, so no need to use a hierarchy or complicated math.

But you will have to handle playing the animation. There's no easy way to do that. You have a bunch of keyframe matrices, and you have to cycle through them.

tnx for answer, can you show me some way to handle this simple animation?