Which performs better? Manipulating rigging bones manually at runtime or an animation

Unity Engine
1

Hello,

Which performs better?

  1. Manipulating rigging bones manually at runtime in LateUpdate (i.e. make character head tilt up)
CharacterHead.transform.localEulerAngles = Vector3(0,0,30);
  1. Import an animation which you have to setup, etc, etc …

I’m finding I am “enjoying” the process of manipulating bones at runtime to create some interesting animations (as opposed to creating animations and importing them). However, I don’t want to head down the path too far if it kills performance.

Thanks!

2

I’m not 100% sure, but animation will probably be faster since it’s being handled under the hood. If the speed difference is actually big enough to matter would just require careful benchmarking I think. Obviously it also depends on the overhead of the calculations you’re using.

Hmm… actually there’s an IK asset in the store I was reading about, it’s doing quite a bit of procedural animation with pretty minimal overhead, so I think that as long as your calculations aren’t crazy and you’re not scaling the number of animation characters into something crazy you should be fine.