When rendering a 3D game’s world, static meshes are often sufficient for modeling the environment like terrain, buildings and other objects. However, if we want it to appear inhabited, we won’t get around filling the world with creatures and characters that move and interact. This is where animation comes into play. 2D games typically realize such animations by displaying different sprite images in quick succession to create the illusion of motion. Composing a 3D animation of individual frames in a similar way, however, quickly becomes impractical due to the sheer amount of data. Instead, 3D games use an underlying bone structure to control a model’s movement in a technique called skeletal animation. This method is not only much more efficient than animating 3D models frame by frame, but also provides a more flexible workflow when animating and allows for perfectly smooth motion through interpolation.