Hy there,
I wonder what is a reasonable amount of vertices for a mesh-model which should be animated by a skeleton.
I have got a pretty detailed model of a sheep, which has got a vertice count of about 80k. Now, if I do a skeletal animation with that sheep, it looks really pretty, but the framerate drops drastically. I.e. from 60 to 10, with just one of the sheeps animated.
I am using the MeshAnimationController to do the skeletal animation.
Also, it seems that the amount of bones does not influence the skinning time a lot, it does not matter if i've got 20 or 100 bones, the time used for software skinning is around 40-50ms on my Intel Core Duo E8200 @ 2.66 GHz.
As I am absolutely new to games, skeletal animation and so on, I have no clue how far away I am from a reasonable model.
So, the questions are:
- For a really nice looking animal, how much vertices is about reasonable, so you can get 50 of them at the same time on the screen ?
- Is skeletal animation the way to go for animated characters ? Or is anything else better/faster ?
- In professional games (like 'Overlord, Raising Hell'), I've seen some sheeps too ;), and I wonder about how much vertices that such a character has, or one of these creatures in the game (those helping you to fulfill your mission). Do they also use skeletal animations (in such games) ?
Thanx for any responses
maxx_981