Ok, here's a small (performance) problem of mine. Actually it's not that small, it's upwards of 40 FPS loss in the worst case.
1: I have a core "skeleton" mesh which has nothing but bones (pivots). It has 13 bones and nothing but a simple box (for some reason it didn't work without SOME mesh data), which I alpha out.
2: I attach the pieces of my armor mesh (13 total) to the appropriate bones. The total polycount is about 1300.
3: I animate the base skeleton mesh, which causes the pieces to move (obviously, since they are parented to the bones).
I figured this would be a great way to speed up the game, since there won't be any actual bone vertex manipulation going on, simply pivot rotations.
It sounded good in theory, but in my engine the results aren't much better than a 1500 poly model with 20-something bones. This just doesn't make sense, can anyone give me a clue as to why this is going so poorly?
I can have at most 2-4 characters on screen before I start getting slowdowns. At 10 the slowdown is up to 40 FPS, averaging closer to 30.
1: I have a core "skeleton" mesh which has nothing but bones (pivots). It has 13 bones and nothing but a simple box (for some reason it didn't work without SOME mesh data), which I alpha out.
2: I attach the pieces of my armor mesh (13 total) to the appropriate bones. The total polycount is about 1300.
3: I animate the base skeleton mesh, which causes the pieces to move (obviously, since they are parented to the bones).
I figured this would be a great way to speed up the game, since there won't be any actual bone vertex manipulation going on, simply pivot rotations.
It sounded good in theory, but in my engine the results aren't much better than a 1500 poly model with 20-something bones. This just doesn't make sense, can anyone give me a clue as to why this is going so poorly?
I can have at most 2-4 characters on screen before I start getting slowdowns. At 10 the slowdown is up to 40 FPS, averaging closer to 30.