What resources do animations need?
by Jonathon Stevens · in Artist Corner · 01/16/2006 (1:14 pm) · 5 replies
Does it affect performance at all with more animations or are they processed one at a time anyway so no matter how many you have, it's the complexity of the animation that matters, not the amount of them? Also, do the animations take up server resources, or client resources or both?
About the author
With a few casual games under his belt as CEO of Last Straw Productions, Jonathon created the increasingly popular Indie MMO Game Developers Conference which. Following the success of IMGDC a new MMOG fan event called LFG Expo will debut in June of 2010.
#2
01/20/2006 (8:09 am)
Yes, but 1.4 supposedly fixed that limitation. I'm more concerned with actual resources used. Take all limits aside, if I had 100,000 animations in one game and 10 in another, does the game with 10 load faster/run faster/perform better? Is each animation loaded/used when it's needed so no matter how many you have, it simply depends on the complexity of the animation itself instead of the sheer number of animations? 
#3
01/20/2006 (8:26 am)
I want to say that the animations are all loaded and kept in memory as long as the model they are associated with are being used. So each animation will require additional system resources. I'm not sure if each model loads the animations into memory, or if every model with the same skeleton can share the animations and only have them loaded into memory once.
#4
The animations are attached to the skeleton. So every model that uses the same skeleton can share the animation - tested, OK.
I want to say that the animations are loaded into memory once and not for each player because they are skeletal animations and not dependant on a particular model. I could be wrong on how the engine functions with storing animation resources but I have been impressed on the efficiency of the enine in other aspects I have learned about.
The 'default' player animations range in size from 2k to 23kb and total 285kb for 33 animations. So, you could estimate that 330 animations would be around 2850kb (2.78mb).?
03/01/2006 (7:27 am)
As I understand it...The animations are attached to the skeleton. So every model that uses the same skeleton can share the animation - tested, OK.
I want to say that the animations are loaded into memory once and not for each player because they are skeletal animations and not dependant on a particular model. I could be wrong on how the engine functions with storing animation resources but I have been impressed on the efficiency of the enine in other aspects I have learned about.
The 'default' player animations range in size from 2k to 23kb and total 285kb for 33 animations. So, you could estimate that 330 animations would be around 2850kb (2.78mb).?
#5
03/01/2006 (8:46 am)
Can we get an official word on if this has been fixed in 1.4 and if the animations load 1 time per model or 1 time per skeleton?
Torque Owner Matthew Jones
Like this One
It might help explain the resouces used.
Matt