What the approx poly-limit for a mobile game character (heavily animated) is like?

kreativ

I am making a few mobile game characters that will be heavily animated using about 15-20 bones. I am at the modeling phase of my game and just wanted an idea really. Good thing is that each level will only feature one such heavily-animated character and the enemy characters will be extremely low-poly and unanimated and few, and the scene itself will be simplistic. No shaders or lighting (unlit shader). So its just this one main hero character that I want to have as much detail as possible whilst being responsive.

Unity 3d used to make game and maya used to model,rig,animate.

Eric Chadwick

Which mobile hardware are you targeting? There are many many flavors out there.

The fact of being "heavily animated" does not matter for the vertex count. As soon as one vertex is animated on a mesh, fast or slow, then they're all being animated, it's the same cost.

A lot of things affect performance, not just vertex or bone count. Have you read these?
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ModelingOptimizedCharacters.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/OptimizingGraphicsPerformance.html

Also, why to count vertices:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polygon_Count

kreativ

yeah i have read all the docs but just wanted an approximation for my case. Obv best is to model and then ptimize as i go forward.

Eric Chadwick

Best bet is to profile your game with some test assets, like from the Asset Store. Or better yet, make some assets that don't look great but have what you think are the right # of verts and bones and materials, and test with that. Once you have some real numbers, then you'll know what's possible.

I would start with what they say there in the docs.