Animated models should have proper model bound

Reference on googlecode: https://code.google.com/p/jmonkeyengine/issues/detail?id=343

[stephengold]

This issue has been bugging me for some time. Unfortunately, I don't see any way to address it without recalculating the bound on every frame --- a big hit to performance.

[pspeed42]

It doesn't need to be recalculated every frame as the issue mentions... it just needs to be a max extent for all frames (calculated once). However, it might be reasonable compromise to just recommend that users set their own bounding box that is 'big enough'.

[stephengold]

The max extent of all frames is a good solution for keyframe animations using the default animation channel. But that would leave closely-related issues when custom animation channels are used to blend animations together, or when a user transform is applied to a Bone. My usual workaround in these cases is to disable scene-graph culling.

[pspeed42]

But you might as well just give it a bounding box of 1,000,000x1,000,000 in that case. Surely there is a compromise on your bounding box.

[pavly-gerges]

I think if this issue is on the old animation system, it should be closed.

[stephengold]

I'm sure the new animation system has the same issue.

[Ali-RS]

Is this only an issue with hardware skinning?

[stephengold]

No, it's also an issue with software skinning.