mesh density for animation

[jim c]

I'm wondering what is the typical mesh density for a hero character in most films? For example, I'm look at something like this:

http://cghub.com/images/view/801350/

 

I'm wondering is that typically the density you'd go for in a model like that? It seems really heavy, particularly if you're going to be using a displacement map with ZBrush sculpted details. Doesn't that pretty much defeat much of the purpose of the displacement map? For something like a face I can understand, if you want to animate things like wrinkles etc with geo deformations instead of displacement maps. But for the main body, it seems odd. So I'm just wondering what others experience with this is.

[abvfx]

To be honest it does not seem that dense. But it all comes down to what your goal is. How close your character will be to the camera, your resolution output and the style of the character.

For body animation, it depends. If you are talking about a suit or human flesh. If you have a suit, then it depends on what parts are rigid ad what parts are meant to be flexible. If you are talking about human then you needs your topology to flow along the contours which will be deforming, rib cage, belly, trapezius etc.

Displacement seems fine for everything that wont be deformed, if it will be deforming then you have to chose how drastic as you dont want to go against the displaced geometry (limit surface). Again im not sure what is the problem with a model like this, if it is a hero character then it seems more than fine as usually the term hero means right in camera.

Edited January 25, 2014 by ab3d

[jim c]

OK. For some reason I thought I remember reading somewhere that you wanted to keep meshes around 10-20K. Maybe I misunderstood it. I guess I just figured that having all the extra polys wouldn't provide much benefit. Especially if you have a subd model, it's all going to get diced up anyways, so I had always figured that all the extra topology was sort of a wasted effort, again, assuming the use of a displacement map.

[abvfx]

10-20K for the whole body? Im sure you can do that. Again though it kinda depends on what it is you are doing. Mechanical/Hard Surface tends to have a lot of polys if it's a hero character with a lot of parts, there are UVs and textures to think about, and sim if it's rigid but moving. So clean topology is needed. But say you have a mid to far character, sculpting a pocket on topology that is pretty much grid like topology is fine. All that will be simmed is the base. I'm sure can extend the use of creasing with sub'd again though if it's a more realistic objects, edges usually transition a lot between sharp-to-bevel often. It all depends.

I'm sure on something like gravity base poly counts where hitting the hundreds of thousands if not higher.

[anim]

OK. For some reason I thought I remember reading somewhere that you wanted to keep meshes around 10-20K. Maybe I misunderstood it. I guess I just figured that having all the extra polys wouldn't provide much benefit. Especially if you have a subd model, it's all going to get diced up anyways, so I had always figured that all the extra topology was sort of a wasted effort, again, assuming the use of a displacement map.

 

if you are talking about animation as a part of pipeline then yes, you need to have as lightweight mesh as possible which is still providing all necessary information to animators for their job so some clever ballance

the point is you need to keep your animation rig realtime and usually more than realtime so you can animate more characters at the same time without playblasting after each keyframe

 

usually you can keep your rig with multiple layer of detail that can be turned on or off

 

all the muscle, skin and wrinkle simulation or any additional mesh detail can be run on top of the animated character or sometimes they have proxy representation in animation rig if it's necessary

as well as all the mesh that's just driven with main skeleton can be just shown as a proxy in animation stage

 

and of course you can render with displacement and as heavy as you want

 

so basically animation mesh lightweight, render mesh as you need

Edited January 25, 2014 by anim

[jim c]

OK thanks. I think I was kind of getting caught up with trying to keep the render mesh light enough to animate with it, without really bothering with using the proxy mesh .