Placeholder Skeletal Mesh?

Greg DAlessandro

Would I be wasting time by creating animations for a placeholder skeletal mesh, and transferring those animations to another skeletal mesh which will utilize the same skeletal rig (the finalized character)?

I'm creating a playable level, and I want to initially get the player's mechanics animations down so that I can work on the aesthetics of the level. Thank you.

Hito

no, you'd be potentially saving time. The sooner you get animations in to play test the sooner you can see where potential issues may lie and adjust accordingly.

As long as the skeleton hierarchy is exactly the same it doesn't matter what the rendered mesh looks like for the game engine. Oftentimes proxy mesh is just a bunch of tubes and boxes childed to the skeleton joints. You do want a proxy that has the same build as final character as much as possible as the silhouette and masses will determine the motions that are believable for the character.

Greg DAlessandro

Is this true if the skeletal mesh will also include armor?

Hito

Yea. Armor, props, etc. As long as the joints between the two rigs have matching names and are located in the same place in the overall hierarchy the animations will work. All bets are off if the hierarchy are different between the two.