Separate Armature Divisions for Export? (Head, Hands, etc)

Pancakes

Hello I am making my first serious rig and I was wondering whether I should export the armature as a whole or whether I should split the characters up into several pieces "character_body_a", "character_head_a", "character_hands_a".

As a general rule what is better and why? How would/do you do it?

The facial rig will have expressions and eyeballs and a mouth that can open and all of that.

thanks.

PS it's not a first person shooter, the character will be in the 3rd person.

Eric Chadwick

In my experience, this totally depends on how the game engine wants to use the data. Usually the export pipeline is set up how the animators at that particular studio like to work.

Sometimes facial animation needed to be separate from the body animation, so the two could be mixed dynamically together, to allow player control of the body. Sometimes the two needed to be exported as one, because it was a performance capture for a non-interactive cinematic.

But animation tracks can be combined together or split apart as needed, depending on how the toolset has been designed.