I’m working on a project and this question is related to Animation Retargets and performance.
(Backstory)
They have a dozen or so characters sharing a single Rig. (The Rig is the default 3rd person Mannequin Rig that you can export right from UE4)
And apparently they have over 2000+ animations being used currently.
They asked me to come on after their previous Rigger left.
I’m tasked with using the Mannequin rig, which is an A pose. While the model is in an T pose, to get the character working with the Mannequin rig.
Looking at the Mannequin rig, it’s not ideal for Rigging. It has a lot of rotations on the bones, the axises are all wrong, among other things.
I created a new one, using the ART toolset, weighted the character, Retargeted the Animation they sent me onto the new Rig. (Source = The Mannequin Rig, Retargeted Rig = My Rig)
Everything is working fine, but they tell me that they can’t use this, because the Retargeting Animation would create duplicated Animations. Which would eat up memory and drop performance.
(Questions)
(1) Does Retargeting Animation cause any noticeable performance drops in a Game? To take it to the extreme, if you have 10,000+ animations, and you bring a new Rig along. Retarget 2000 animations onto the new Rig, which would create 2,000 duplicated animations. Would their be more “memory” as they put it, used by UE4?
(2) If I cannot use the Retarget Animation, what suggestions could you give me dealing with rigging a T posed character with an A pose Rig?