..bone number limit per character..

[Naughty Alien]

..hi guys..i really like new look of website..however, while reading those general infos about engine, I have spotted that one of information said '..up to 256 bones per character, hardware accelerated..' now im wondering...is this correct because last time if I remember correctly limit was about 59 per character, sooo..is this ..correct (256 bones per character) ? Also, if 256 bones are actually supported now, is this only for SM4 cards because i know there are difference between sm3/sm4 cards regarding how many bones can be consumed per character..so, whats the official word about it??..any feedback is welcome..

[Marleys Ghost]

I was under the impression that 256 bones for animation was supported from LE 2.25

 

from the version text.

 

2.25

-Animation now supports up to 256 bones.

 

Not sure if there are any requirements regarding SM3/SM4?

[Naughty Alien]

..hmm...i have entirely missed that text exposed in 2.25..ehh..my bad then..theoretically there can be any number of bones affecting a given vertex, however 4 bones is usually used as a compromise between quality and memory usage. The more bones you have, the more data you need to store on the GPU and transfer per vertex.

If you do skinning on the CPU, on the other hand, you don't have that limitation and can use more bones if you want, but trade off is loss of speed (and its ugly ) ..

[Pixel Perfect]

Attaching verticies to 4 bones and weighting them is complicated enough ... I can't imagine why anyone would want to use more although I suspect there are maybe some circumstances - maybe facial animation!

[Naughty Alien]

Attaching verticies to 4 bones and weighting them is complicated enough

 

very true

[VicToMeyeZR]

256 is limit, but you are down to 64 for bones that effect mesh. Maybe LE is set to 59 software I don't know, but hardware limits you to 64. (hardware, I mean by the ShaderModel version)

 

Each bone effecting mesh is a 3x4 matrix. or 3 x float4 so 256/4 = 64

[Naughty Alien]

Maybe LE is set to 59 software I don't know

 

..well..I really hope there is no emulation over animation, of that kind..however i did noticed that animation is slower in 2.3 then 2.23-2.28..hmm