Hey guys! So I have finished rigging my character but I don’t have my legs and arms connected to the root bone and not even the fingers are connected to the hand bone ( everything is parented tho so they move properly). But so I downloaded the mechanim tutorial project file and I saw that every bone was connected.
However if I don’t connect the bones like they are for the character in the mechanim tutorial I SAVE LIKE 12 BONES. And that is really important because im making a mobile game. And I dont see anyone taking advantage of it. Because the bone limitation is like 30 before people say you can run into performance problems.
Which makes me wonder. Is there some kind of disadvantage using this method. Because 12 BONES?!@?? Thats a lot man!
This is iOS4 era and before thinking, but you can easily test it for yourself. Create one bone then create a two bone chain separate from the first bone, a little spaced apart. Skin a simple cylinder with these 3 bones in the skin. Create a simple animation with the first bone as the root, and the two bone chain acting like a leg. Export - see what fbx and Unity has to say about it. If it works it’s an acceptable setup. If it doesn’t - you should probably add the needed bones between the limbs and root.
I recently rigged and animated a dragon with over 70 bones, with several other minor characters on screen (roughly 24-30 bones each). Frame rate was not an issue nor was whatever else bone count affects.
I’m an animator so I’m not sure what the benchmark was - but the coder/designer reported all good on his end.
Question - if your character performs a jump - you are essentially animating (translating) at least 5 bones during the entire animation - instead of only one (the root) and only performing rotations on the rest of the bones? This doesn’t sound like a good process - but if it works - it’s all a matter of taste.
Well i importred the model ive already rigged and applyed an extreamly simple run animation where prettymuch everything is moving. And I did run into a problem.
I had a seperate rig for the joint chain for my foot + toe and Basicly the feet were left on the inital pose and didn’t move with the legs. They were just floating.
So how do I fix it do I need to add that foot joint chain to the leg and is it ok if it’s under it’s own null or it has to be a part of the joint chain of the leg?
Also even thou i didn’t notice any more problems I have prettymuch every boypart separated. Then should I just connect them just to be safe.
or maybe i should just create a new more humanoid rig for my character?
These are decisions you should make on your own based on the type of game you are creating and the functionality you want the character to have.
If you are creating a regular humanoid character - I’d stick with the tried and successful method of creating a humanoid skeleton like normal.
If you are attempting something ‘different’ with the character like dismemberment or swap-able components - the setup you use is going to have to be what you think the best is for your particular use.
There are other areas where optimizations can be made for mobile deployment - so unless you are creating a game with 10+ characters on screen with 70+ bones each - personally I’d create the characters as lean as possible with all the bones it needs to animate properly. (10+ & 70+ are arbitrary numbers)
Yea so I found out what the problem was and It happened because the feet weren’t attached to the root nul because that was just how my center of gravity was created which caused unity to just ignore them. Tho I decided to rerig my character anyway because I had a slight trouble with my controls and the hirearchy was just a mess. And you know I kind of just got how the rigging works like I just got it. I guess that rig was pretty good for the first time but you know first time is a first time.
I’m planning to have up 18 characters on the screen so 1 is player which will have around (40 - 50 bones) and enemies up to 30. Would it be good enough for performance ? What do you think?
I think that is doable on current mobile devices, but might not keep a steady fps on older devices.
Best way to try out is to get 2 characters complete, and then have the main player character and clone the second character 16 times and run a scene that includes as much animation as you think you will have at one time.
If it doesn’t hold up - you can consider less prominent characters to have less bones and less animation data also.
Glad you worked your way through the first character. Rigging is an art - especially for complex characters with different setups and cloth and accessories, and bones for facial animations. But rigging is also fun - complicated fun.