We introduced the series, then looked at adding simple geometry to the Forge viewer, followed by animated skeletons. Now it’s time to look at approaches for making these skeletons more visible.
As mentioned last time, today’s post is a bit of a “non-post”: it talks about adding a SkinnedMesh to be animated alongside an underlying skeleton, which we already know doesn’t currently work inside the Forge viewer. But it’s instructive to see the process in case either the situation changes or someone wants the code for a pure three.js application.
Basically it’s possible to add a SkinnedMesh into a render overlay or into the main scene, it just doesn’t get animated along with the skeleton itself.
Here’s a screenshot:
Here’s a video that gives a better sense of what I mean. Look closely to see the skeleton moving but the mesh staying still.
The issue is buried in the guts of the Forge viewer: basically the viewer has its own render loop where it chooses the objects it…