number of bones in character rig

Busterizer

Considering that I am supposed to make real-time game characters, I did some research on how rigging was done for them. I found catwoman model with its rig ripped from one of the batman games. Number of bones in around 100. Considering nature of batman games I find this impressive given the number of enemies on screen at once.

For todays PC game what is average number of bones for in character rigs? I don't want to create overly complex rig that might be performance hog in the game.

poopipe

iirc we're using that sort of number on ps4 characters

Most of the enemies will have a lot less detail and there will be LOD rigs so it's not like they're dealing with 20 full catwoman rigs at once

Froyok

It depends of the game.

A game using a third person view will need a certain amount of bones while a top-down shooter will probably need less simply because the camera is not located at the same distance. A fight game (such as Street Fighter for example) needs a lot more bones because animations are in the core of the gameplay. Uncharted 2 as an other exmaple use at least 90 bones just for the faces, simply because they use very advanced facial animations.

In your example, Batman is a series of games where you performs a lot of close combat, therefore you can see very well the animations.

More bones also doesn't always mean better animations. Look at Shadow of the Colossus : the colossi have a very limited amount of bones but they are very well animated.

What should matter I think is what the person in charge of the animation want. If the animator want to make some very advanced movements, maybe you need to add specific bones to support that.

Farfarer

I think for a standard biped rig you're looking at around 60 (20 for each arm including fully rigged fingers and twist bones for upper and lower arms, 6-7 for each leg including twist bones, 6-7 for spine/neck/head).

But as mentioned, it varies greatly between needs... for leading characters in modern games, probably well in excess of 100 (I think even Episode 2 Alyx had over a hundred bones, with lots of little ones to ease skinning between extreme poses).

oglu

do a search for the slides of ryse son of rome talk from chris... there a some numbers... think about 700 bones for the main char...

Froyok

oglu wrote: »

do a search for the slides of ryse son of rome talk from chris... there a some numbers... think about 700 bones for the main char...

They reduced the numbers some weeks before the launch however.

JohnnyRaptor

also make sure you check with your coders about the limitations of the engine your using.

UDK for example has a 75 bone limit before it splits the mesh up treating it as a separate mesh, increasing your draw calls etc.