We’re porting a 2D game from XNA. We’re wanting to upgrade it into a 3D RTS game, with Animated models (rigged w/skeletons). So far, all of the examples I’ve seen for Monogame are very 2D-ish.
Is there something about Monogame itself which hinders our ability to produce a game with more stunning/advanced 3D graphics? I would think we could just import a skinned/skeletal FBX model with animations, and just “use it” inside Monogame without a lot of headache, or slow performance.
Since I posted this, User @kororro, pointed me at this project which is a partial answer. At least it appears that 3D skinned/skeletal/animated support is relatively easy to do with MonoGame along with some of the framework extensions.
Here’s the sample project which demonstrates it:
https://github.com/vpenades/MonoGame.AnimAndPBR
I suppose I should load up a scene with 1000 of these animated models, and just see what happens. And then of course, we need basic shadows too, at least basic shadows for the objects casting shadows on the ground where they are placed.
If you want to render thousands of animated models, then you need to edit shader files to support instancing. It is not hard to do but all those permutations, it is slow to compile megashaders (and slow to test) so I havent do it, at least yet, going to alter these different (my own way) to work someday. And with shadow support, zbuffer write shader is needed (easy).
Keep in mind that as vpenades wrote, that library is wip so it maybe isnt ready for advanced stuff (thats why I keep other 3d loader+animation where I have done instancing + anim+normal/parallaxmapping/reflection).
Animation code if from https://github.com/Kosmonaut3d/Modelviewer and using customized shaders.