Slunkar: Well, with the system my artist and I had worked out there were 13 body parts, each a seperate mesh:
Head
Torso
Abdomen
Left Thigh and Right Thigh
Left Calf and Right Calf (includes feet)
Left Shoulder and Right Shoulder (includes upper arm)
Left Forearm and Right Forearm
Left Hand and Right Hand
Each one parented to one of the bones of the base skeleton. Thus, 13 bones.
The problem is, some people told me that it would be even slower to create a single surface system for this method than just using a single mesh with normal bone animation (and blitz does that pretty slow). Besides the fact that I have no idea how to create a single surface system...
Anyway, at 13 surfaces per character, I was having a serious problem...with very few characters. I narrowed it down to the surface counts being the sole problem. I suppose I'll have to stick with one surface per character, and just use very low poly and bone counts. Otherwise the alien critters wouldn't be any fun since they have to swarm to be...well...fun to fight.
However, since I now have only one animated human, character I suppose I can have my artist put a bit more detail into him.
Head
Torso
Abdomen
Left Thigh and Right Thigh
Left Calf and Right Calf (includes feet)
Left Shoulder and Right Shoulder (includes upper arm)
Left Forearm and Right Forearm
Left Hand and Right Hand
Each one parented to one of the bones of the base skeleton. Thus, 13 bones.
The problem is, some people told me that it would be even slower to create a single surface system for this method than just using a single mesh with normal bone animation (and blitz does that pretty slow). Besides the fact that I have no idea how to create a single surface system...
Anyway, at 13 surfaces per character, I was having a serious problem...with very few characters. I narrowed it down to the surface counts being the sole problem. I suppose I'll have to stick with one surface per character, and just use very low poly and bone counts. Otherwise the alien critters wouldn't be any fun since they have to swarm to be...well...fun to fight.
However, since I now have only one animated human, character I suppose I can have my artist put a bit more detail into him.