Thanks for the example, I think I get it now.

While reading about Tabula Rasa deffered shading in GPU Gems 3 (found here: http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch19.html ), I found the term stencil masking. I vaguely know what it means and what can it be used for but I don't know how to use it in XNA. So if anyone can give a brief explanation of stencil masking, and a small ...

That depends on what library you are using. If you're looking for information on how to build an animation system from scratch, check out the SkinnedModel sample in the education catalog.

If I got your question right, you want to export some data from Maya to XNA so you can draw/not draw certain models (i presume you mean meshes here) based on that. If that's what you're asking, you can name a mesh something like "INVISIBLE mesh name", so you can check in XNA whether the mesh name starts with INVISIBLE and not ...

You should use the Microsoft's Text to Speech library. There's a topic on that somewhere in the forums, use the search. Although I haven't had any luck using it on my computer.

Try playing with the Quaternion interpolation mode in the fbx exporter settings.

Your shader code looks alright. Try changing the first TexCoord to a Vector4 and modifying the VertexElements (or something equally weird).

Did you use smooth binding? Maybe you'd like to upload you maya file somewhere so I can take a look?

Can't you just pass the index as a parameter to the function, like SpecialStage(i);. The way you are trying to do this would require a array of delegates.

Well is he going to let someone run that site, or just let it rot like that?