Skinning Question: Skinning and viewport speed

[TapioKa]

I can't speak for the other solutions, but when I use the " Skin" modifier with a low rez mesh 5-7k polys, it updates pretty much in realtime. I also switch to rigid vertices to speed up the redraw speed, but that might be limiting if there are any subtleties that you need to animate.:)

But I guess it also depends on the method you want to animate, ie rigging your own skel or using char studio etc.

[spacegroo]

I've read that Skin can have performance issues in complex scenes, although I haven't experienced that first-hand. I debated over Skin vs Physique, but for different reasons. I was more concerned with workflow and ease of use. For my needs (which are exporting to a game engine) Skin made more sense. First and foremost, the game engine supported it the best. But from an artist standpoint, it had better Vertex Assignments and a lot of support from 3rd party scripts. If you know that you'll be doing a great deal of manual vertex weighting, then Physique may not be for you. However, Skin's envelopes aren't as robust as Physique's. So there is a trade-off.

If you're working on complex scenes, proxy objects that are either low-poly Skinned/Physiqued meshes are useful. Or better yet, have a low-poly mesh that is segmented and just link the segments to your rig. That will be even faster.

[gman]

For viewport speed with ACT apply a cgsmooth and pull it into the negative and in the stack right click and use on in viewport and apply another for on in rendering.

cheers

[zukezuko]

another question is if are you using bones
or caracter studio.
for bones skin is ideal
for caracter studio physique is way better (envelopes adjust automatical
if biped structure is right)

i prefer bones with skin
its more fun.

[Martin Andersen]

Yeahh... I really like to know what people have experience with.. I prefer bones/skin to and all the manual tweaking and controle.

My problem is on 3dsmax that the speed performance is not the best. Especially when you start wirrering stuff. So I'm almost switching to xsi instead because of the speed it has...

So I just like to hear the different suggestions on skinning.

[EricChadwick]

I'd echo spacegroo's comment about proxies. This is how Pixar seems to do their work... at least that's what shows in their screen shots and promo vids.

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