Game Development Community

Skin vs Material? Whats the difference?

by John Vanderbeck · in Torque Game Engine · 03/31/2004 (5:52 am) · 5 replies

Hey all,

Digging around in things trying to get things to work right and I fiind that our models according to the dump routine in the engine have "materials" but not "skins".

Whats the difference? Can anyone explain this to me please?
NextNext Thread
PrevPrevious Thread
More from Torque Game Engine


Torque Owner Erik Madison
#1
03/31/2004 (8:05 am)
Skin is something that is widely misused. Some folk refer to the mesh as the skin, others call the texture a skin. Its also a verb, as in the mesh has been skinned to skeleton. Most of TGE code considers skin to be texture related. Thats why current functions are 'setskinname', 'reskin' etc.
All my code and future work considers skin to be the texture, aka material.

Torque Owner John Vanderbeck
VanderGames
#2
03/31/2004 (8:11 am)
Well then what's the material? Everything that i'd consider the "skin" in our models is being listed by Torque as the "Material" and not the "Skin".

Torque Owner Brett Fattori
#3
03/31/2004 (8:14 am)
And if you look inside the engine, you'll find a SkinMesh class. This is a model that is a bonable model. As opposed to a mesh made of multiple parts that all animate separately. How's that for misusing skin.

- Brett

Torque Owner Erik Madison
#4
03/31/2004 (8:17 am)
Heh, bonable model. Is that like an AKA for Paris Hilton?

Associate Kyle Carter
#5
03/31/2004 (10:27 am)
Skinning == mesh deformable by bones.
Material/texturing == texture maps and related appearance properties (like in TSE, shaders).

In Torquespeak, anyway.