Help manipulating player meshes

Hi,

I like to think I have achieved a lot in Blitz3D thanks to the users of this forum and, of course, the Blitz3D command reference. However, there is one thing I *really* cannot get my head around and this is adjusting the player's (or for that matter a NPC's) mesh to show the new equipment they are wearing.

Could someone please post a short tutorial (with media, perhaps... *please!*) showing how to:

* load a basic character model
* animate it
[So far, simple. Here's the main bit...]
* let the user toggle between:
1) 'with armour' / 'without armour'
2) 'red hat' / 'blue hat'

Or something to this effect.
i.e.
1 = replace part of the mesh
2 = just re-texture part of the mesh

Thanks

There are a couple tricks applicable here, depending on what exactly is being swapped. For example, for stuff where the overall shape doesn't change, just the surface appearance, you can just swap textures. For attaching equipment to a character (and thus swap what equipment is attached) you can parent stuff to bones. For other stuff (eg. the character puts on a robe) you want to swap the entire model.

a very very long time ago i made simple system for somthing like this. It probably wont suit you if you are trying to make a professional MMORPG or somthing similar where users expect very cool model attachments, but what i did was make each character use the same uv coordinates of a texure.. then i simply made drew all my items as textures using the appropriate texture area.

when a player equipped somthing i simply merged the appropriate textures into one, then applied that texture onto the player model.. and all the items were shown.