Animation Systems

Disadvantages of using mesh based characters:

The disadvantages of using mesh based characters is that the vertices and polygon count stacks up very high which can eventually be alot of data once animated.Another disadvantage is that because there are so many vertices the animation of the character is much harder to produce because you would have to move vertex by vertex which would take a long time.

Advantages of using a skeletal animation system.

The advantage of using skeletal animation is that instead of the mesh representing each and every vertex they represent bones relative to the vertices.

1.2.

As you can see above these two pictures show a mesh based character system and a skeleton based character system. In picture one you can see the mesh based character, in picture the mesh is still there but a skeleton based character is over it.In both pictures you can see the weight curves on the vertices, the bigger the curve the bigger the effect it will have upon the vertices once moved.

What does “to ‘weight’ each vertex individually” mean?

Weight on a vertex is the effect the bone has on the mesh , the bigger the curve the bigger the effect the vertices will have.If the weight is done wrong the character will mutate and deform.