How To: Render a model with a texture??

[Quinn]

I have gone through the tutorials up to number 6 and they are awesome.  I am totally new to the 3D world of programming but would love to learn more.

I have a model and a texture that I would like to load and view in the HMDemo.  I actually have it loading and can see the model but it is completely black.  How do I render the model with its textures?  Also, if the model has animations, is it diffcult to render those?

[Chr0n1x]

If you are using the normal classes etc provided by the tutorials, it should render, unless the texture data is not being specified inside the model file, which models like tiger etc do. You can try modifying the rendering code to take a loaded Texture and putting that as a parameter. Would require a bit extra work, but not too much.

[Quinn]

Is there anyway to tell if when I load the model that the texture is being loaded as well?  I put a break point in the code after loading the model but I don't see any properties on the model for textures etc.

[mikeschuld]

If you are using the basicshader in the tutorials, there will be no texture support, but if you used the modified version from here on the forums, then it should be working fine.

[Quinn]

My brother used a new fbx exporter and it is working fine now.  Thanks for the help!

How difficult is it to render animations?  I believe you mentioned that was coming up in another tutorial...no eta?

[Chr0n1x]

Anitmations are not included in XNA at the moment. There are workarounds, it all depends on the complexity of them and if Mike wants to include them or wait for the official support, which will no doubt come soon enough, since there is a bit of pressure on MS to implement it.
Good things are coming (font support/animations), so I guess we will have to wait for now.

[mikeschuld]

There is an AnimationComponent project going on that you can try to get working over at: http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=animationcomponents. I haven't played with it much, but like everything else in this area of programming it will undoubtedly take a bit of tweaking.