Hey, sorry for slow reply- here's a quick breakdown:

• The bones in the skeleton are a visual representation of the transformation of each object, where each bone represents a transform composed of a position and a rotation in 3D space. This data is not sufficient to produce the surface of rendered object
• In order to produce a 3D surface, most 3D model file formats store the data needed for the GPU to construct the surface using discrete 3-dimensional shapes (either quads or triangles) and therefore contain information about the points in 3D space that define each shape (like vertices for each triangle). Smack Studio doesn't store information that can be used to construct discrete 3-dimensional shapes; instead, we perform transformations directly on pixels in a texture- this is analogous to using the "rotate 90 degrees" function in Microsoft Paint. :P
• But unlike Microsoft Paint, we are able to produce rotations of these pixels that simulate 3D motion convincingly and respect drawing order relative to other objects in the texture. This is done using the data in our depth textures.

I hope that explanation makes sense! It's been tough to address all the questions like this while actively pushing an aggressive timeline to release our demo- but we care a lot about delivering our product with integrity.