Characters

To get this system to function properly with your characters there will be some things that you will need to know. When it comes to Animation nothing is Plug-N-Play and there is no Magic Button you can press to make things happen. This section will discuss the setup and requirements for handling characters. There are two approaches you can take when it comes to Characters, Retargeting Pre-RunTime, and Retargeting During-RunTime. Each approach has it's pro's and con's, although one may be much easier, the other will have less performance overhead. The performance overhead of Run-Time Retargeting will be roughly 0.3ms - 0.6ms hit, the actual framerate difference caused by this hit will depend on your CPU. Performance Difference Seems to Cap Out at around 50 characters in the scene. Pre-RunTime Retargeting: Pro's: - Nearly negligible runtime penalty, ensuring that scenes run at optimal efficiency. - High fidelity, especially important for detailed interactions like contact points. Con's: - Manual modifications are time consuming, particularly when contact animations must be precise. - May require creating and storing unique animation variants for each character type. This necessity can significantly inflate the memory usage, particularly in projects with many distinct characters. Run-Time Retargeting: Pro's: - Accelerates development by reducing the need for manual animation tweaks. - Can quickly adapt to changes without the overhead of re-authored animation assets. Con's: - Imposes a solid performance overhead on the scene, which may become critical in performance-sensitive environments. - Potential inaccuracies such as minor misalignments or unwanted offsets, particularly in delicate interactions, especially regarding fingers. - Necessitates a more complex asset management strategy for different offset scenarios. I will be documenting both approaches within this section and how to go about using the setup that was provided for Run-Time Retargeting.