Animation reuse for improved performance

Step 0.

A well-made game shows a lot of characters without losing the quality of the rendering.


In general, fewer bone counts and proper LOD usage will help optimize character rendering performance. A closer look reveals that the animation is being reused. Undoubtedly it will be very helpful. This time, we will do a basic test for 'animation reuse' with Unreal engine 4.



Step 1.

'Set Master Pose Component' is the blueprint we were looking for. I've used it before in another article.
https://gameenginebread.blogspot.com/2017/09/render-skeletal-mesh-with-different.html

Step 2.

Create many characters for testing. I used 21 * 21 characters.



Step 3.

This is the result of reusing the animation. Type console command 'stat anim' to see detail.


'AnimGameThreadTime' : 2.91ms

CPU i7 6700k and Geforce 1060 are installed in the test PC.

Step 4.

Remove link to 'Set Master Pose Component' node and test again.


AnimationThreadTime : 8.14ms

Conclusion and Remaining Issue.

There is definitely an improvement. This is not a final system for release and there is a difference in each system, we will not perform numerical comparison.

Sadly, I will not implement the example here for actual use. Because actual usage is highly dependent on the game system or genre.

Consider the following items to further.
- Reuse of 'Idle' animation is common. 'Walking animation' also consider re-use as much as possible.
- Adjust the frequency of reuse according to the distance from the camera.
- Consider the nature of the herd (e.g. zombies)
- Searching for a master pose target each time is not a good performance. Use a fixed target.



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