Best Animation Export Method for Small Wildlife Assets?

paradoxical-pixel

Hi Polycount!

I have just modeled some butterflies and am trying to figure out the best way to transfer their basic animation loops into UDK.

Would using bones be too overkill for a low-poly butterfly? Should I bake the animation into a vertex animation instead? What option would be the most processor-friendly?

Thanks guys! :thumbup:

paradoxical-pixel

Just to give a little more info, the animation is in Max and it's just a basic 20 frame cycle of the wings flapping. I plan to animate the actual movement of the butterflies using Matinee in UDK.

JamesWild

Depends on what they're doing and how many there are.

For large amounts of butterflies, I had some success using a particle emitter, which has lots of useful stuff like Orbit for making them fly along a certain path, and it was cheap.

paradoxical-pixel

Hmmm... I hadn't even thought about using a particle emitter. Thanks! That's definitely something I will look into.

My question was more about the actual flapping animation though. If I did use a particle system, that would presumably just be for changing the butterflies' root position/rotation. How did you bring the flapping animation into the engine? Did you use bones or some other method?