I was going to post this as a new topic but I thought I might as well just continue this discussion.
I noticed that the documentation provides some very helpful descriptions of things like nodes, meshes, control points, animation curves, and the example code helps to reinforce the ideas, and this works beautifully for learning! Most of these example programs have a single 'main.cxx' source file.
A few of the sample programs are more complex and have quite a few source files. i.e. ImportScene and MyOwnWriteWriter. The documentation talks about these more detailed samples and walks you through the steps, which is great!
But the ViewScene example code, perhaps the most involved and complex of them all, does not have accompanying explanations/walk-troughs for how the process is carried out. More specifically, the details of how bone nodes, mesh deformers and skinning are modeled in the FBX format is left out. For something this complex, source code does not answer all your questions. Especially since the code is designed to handle all possible cases, and so has a lot of extra details and cases to handle.
I am not a beginner with animation and skinning. I successfully implemented animation and skinning in the ASSIMP library in just a few days. I've read a lot of online articles on skeletal animation and skinning and I understand the principles very well. My only problem is a lack of comprehensive detail for how FBX deformation and skinning has been designed and implemented by the developers, and the relevant terminology and data structures.
I have devoted much of my spare time these past few weeks, to looking through source code, and reading the message boards, but still have only a rough understanding of how skinning and deformers work. Is there any possibility that a new section on link nodes, skinning, clusters and deformers will be added to the online documentation? Are there any graphics programming books that explain the methods of skinning in the FBX format? There are comprehensive learning books on Autodesk Maya, 3ds max, and autocad. Why are their no such books for the FBX SDK?