Bones vs gameobject animation

I am currently working on a game that has a “reactor slots”

When transitioning, a static slot model is replaced by the animated “holder” which lifts the reactor module and unlatches so that it’s possible to take it out.

Those slots consist of a platform with 4 clutches at the bottom. Should I use separate clutches as gameobjects and rotate them ingame or should I use bones to animate them?

There can be 10 or 20 of those animating at the same time - which option is faster to draw?
Which version is easier to change? I assume bone animations, but unsure; might be something I’m missing.

Any other advice?

Thanks.

When it comes to performance, animating is propably faster according to those threads:

I can’t help you with the “Which version is easier to change?” question as I don’t really understand what “reactor slots”, “holder” or “clutches” are.

greetings

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That’s 6 years out of date.

Thanks, that’s good information already;

I was thinking I had only 2 options - script vs bones, but it’s
script vs animation vs bones

a) script: Every part is a separate gameobject and is translated using script
b) animation: Every part is a separate gameobject and is translated using animation.
c) bones: There is just one gameobject and it’s animated using bones and animations are created in the 3d editor, not in Unity.

If those assumptions are correct,

  1. I would assume for non-blended bone animations, bones are overkill and more expensive overall for the task.
  2. Animation would be the optimal way of animating a few separate elements, cost of having a few gameobjects more is negligible.
  3. Script animation would not be optimal and would be hard to implement and edit later too.

Any mistakes in my reasoning?

Thanks.

Oh, six years is a lot :smile: didn’t see that. Thanks though. I’m also pretty sure I once found a thread where someone tested it and scripting was faster, but I can’t find it anymore.

Nevertheless it probably also depends on your hardware. So I’d suggest to just test it, it’s not hard to script a simple rotation.