Dear Group,

For those of you in school, and you've not already done so, if you check around you may get lucky and discover that your Uni has a working version of Maya or other autodesk product you can use from a uni computer.

On that, I would be most appreciative if someone could make and post/link- to a very simple sample of setting up a model that can be animated in code as with the Tank in the simpleanimation sample.   I've tried sorting through that FBX, but it is just too big to manage in an effective way and compare to anything I make.

What would help me greatly is to see a very simple example of a textured cylinder setting at 0,0,1 and extending up to 0,3,1 with a radius of .5.   Its name would be "postmesh"

 At the top of that would be another cylinder, parallel to the X axis with one end setting at 0,3,1 and extending out to 3,3,1 called "armmesh".   

Each mesh would be made up of few sides, maybe 5.

The two could be parented in such a way where you would translate or rotate postmesh, and armmesh would move along with it accordingly.   Then, one could rotate armmesh and it would rotate about the point where it "connects" to post mesh.   If postemesh were setting at 0,0,1, armmesh would rotate about 0,3,1.

I've been fiddling with this for some time, without any success.  A small, simple, 2-mesh example like this with very few vertices in an ascii text FBX would be very helpful in that it would provide a reference to what a working example might look like with which to compare my efforts.

Also, if someone is familiar with creating these types of meshes and is familiar with the lessons in the getting started guide, some direction to the sections in which to focus for this type of task would be helpful.   The section on kinematics (lesson 5 of  chapter 6) appears relevant, but discusses setting up animations within maya, thus has the potential to contain much distracting information that isn't relevant to simply having the model prepared so that it can be manipulated by referencing individual meshes & bones in XNA.

Best,

Byroh