Animations with .b3d!

I have several character models I use for my game. They each have around 3k poly's and their .b3d files are close to 200kb's.

I need to have various animations for each of these characters, which up until now I was simply using copied .b3d files with the alternate animations sequences and appending it to the original model.

I want to know if there is a way I can only save bone data into the animation .b3d files to keep their filesize smaller. Seeing as the models themselves are identical I don't see why I need to store all the mesh data more than once?

I use Milkshape to save my files if that makes any difference. I tried to save a .b3d file with only the bones but it gave me an error saying there was "nothing to save". If I just put a few dummy tri's in the scene would that allow me to append it? or does Blitz3D require more information in order to append the animation to a file?

Thanks for any help you guys can give me!

I don't know much about Milkshape's b3d exporter but it sounds like you should try other tools too. Ultimate Unwrap can open and save b3d files; you could try opening your animations, deleting all the polygons, and then saving.

I animate with all the animations in one file, but I don't think Milkshape is useful for that approach; you need an animation tool that allows you to play sections of the timeline, as opposed to the entire timeline every time. I use CharacterFX for animating, although that tool hasn't progressed any in a while so I'm currently looking at Pacemaker and Fragmotion as options to switch to.

That all said, the idea of skeleton-only files for animations would be useful for sharing animations between multiple characters.

Well I would only be using the skeleton bone data for 1 model each. You said you place all the animations in one file. Do you have any code that allows you to play only specific sequences of the animation even though you only loaded it from one file? That would probably accomplish my task all the same...

ExtractAnimSeq