title: Recommended way to load (non-interactive) animations (made using Maya) into OpenGL ES on iOS and Android
body: <p>So far we have been able to successfully load static OBJ files (converted to .h) into our OpenGL application.</p>
  <p>We can then apply transforms to these objects in order to animate them.</p>
  <p>The next step on our project is to have a professional 3D animator do the animations in Maya, and create a &quot;Loader&quot; to display them in 3D using OpenGL.</p>
  <p>We have found lots of examples online that deal with video games and loading static models, but our animations will be absolutely pre-defined by the animator, we just need to load them.</p>
  <p>It is important to mention we cannot render it int oa video because we are building this on top of an AR library which will let users literally walk around the animation, that part is solved, we just need to get the animations to render using OpenGL.</p>
  <p>I have looked into <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3335771/recommended-animated-model-format-to-load-in-opengl">this question</a> regarding the appropriate format the animator should use to export from Maya.</p>
  <p>.dae (COLLADA) file format seems to be a good way to encapsulate model and animation information, and the loading it using <a href="http://assimp.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Assimp</a> but we have not found this loader compiled for iOS or Android (which are the platforms we are developing for).</p>
  <p>Another approach we have seen recommended online is to export a series of OBJ files and load the corresponding OBJ for each frame.</p>
  <p>Another approach we see around is to use an &quot;Engine&quot;, but there are so many it is hard to know which one we should focus on.</p>
  <p>We do not mind paying for an Engine but how do we know which one will work best?</p>
  <p>We found <a href="http://intersogmobile.com/news/279-using-of-3d-engines-in-ios-development" rel="nofollow noreferrer">these examples</a>, but we do not see a clear &quot;Winner&quot;.</p>
  <p>Has anyone gotten something like this working on iOS or Android devices?</p>
  <p>What would be your recommendations?</p>