Hello! i was reading into skinned meshes and i found them really interesting, and i plan to use them in my own projects
The issue is im unsure how they work, and how to optain one and animate it. I read the API doccumentation yet im still a little confused on how they work and how to use them. I am also unsure about meshparts and their use.
For my game, i plan to have realistic water manipulation and i think it would be really cool if i used skinned meshes to animate water, id like to know how to achieve that.
The pages linked will briefly cover how to obtain and/or create and animate using blender or Maya, but for a more in-depth tutorial you may need to look for sources outside of the Roblox documention for using your chosen modeling software.
A MeshPart is very similar to a standard Part, except a MeshPart has properties for applying a custom mesh and texture (via MeshId and TextureId properties). Historically, a SpecialMesh could be used to achieve a very similar effect, however MeshParts have superceded that practice for most cases (For more details see: MeshPart | Roblox Creator Documentation).
Skinned meshes differ from MeshParts as they allow for animation with a bone structure embedded in the file of your mesh - this bone structure can then be animated using Roblox Animations objects just like a rigid body (ie. the classic R6 or R15 Roblox Character Models)
I’ve never been much of a modeler myself, so I haven’t dabbled in skinned meshes too heavily but I do believe the links included should put you on the right track! Feel free to ask more questions, if anything comes up. I may be only able to answer from the technical side, but someone more experienced in modeling may know more.