Hello guys!

Was hoping someone could help…

What kind of animation (vertex animation or skeletal animation ) needs more processing power from the CPU and GPU? And why ?

I assume, that a vertex animation is more expensive, but i’m not shure.

Thanks.

Both have pros and cons.

vertexAnimation are ok if you do not have too many vertices in your model, and not too many frames.
Pro: easy to generate, easy to edit, export and load. Less computing power.
Cons: may use more memory than skeleton anims. Not suitable for long animations. Linear interpolation, meaning movements where a rotation are involved may require more frames to look ok.

SkeletonAnimation
Pro: complex motions can be created and more suitable for ‘organic’ movements.
Cons: More computation. More complex to generate. On low end mobile devices, you’re better off using short vertex anims than skeleton animations.

Best way to find out is to output both types and see how it goes!

Thanks for the quick reply.

Fabrice Closier - 05 November 2014 09:25 PM

Best way to find out is to output both types and see how it goes!

Of course, live testing is the best method to check. I just wanted to know the opinion of the more experienced developers.

For example, the output *.awd file is larger by exporting animated model as vertex animation (1 character model, 1 run animation).

As I understand, the more polygons, the more storage and computation is required. For each frame the position of vertices is recalculated and algorithm of linear interpolation is used.

But what I do not understand how the algorithm works with skeletal animation?

I guess, that animation data are not stored for each frame in this case, but only the key states of bones and vertices.
All other intermediate positions are calculated by more complicated algorithm.

This takes up less memory, but obviously requires more computation.

Is that so?

P.S.: Sorry for my english…