On Creating Cool Real-Time 3D

Single Mesh Characters
  
On Creating Cool Real Time 3D

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A single mesh character is not made of separate parts. As the name implies, the character is one single mesh. The character is animated by changing the position of the vertices in the mesh directly. This can be done by having a table of positions or offsets for each frame or just by switching meshes as the character animates. Quake characters are the classic single mesh characters.

Figure 3: A character created from a single mesh
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Figure 3:
A character created from a single mesh

Benefits of this method:

  • Single mesh characters look better, especially when modeled with low polygons counts. There are no seams in the character and the mesh looks smoother.
  • The characters are fast. Since there is no need to transform each vertex through a hierarchy, there is a lot less math required to display these characters.

Drawbacks of this method:

  • The characters are not as adaptable. Since the character must be animated by an external system, it is not as easy to come up with unique motions.
  • The animation files are larger. Since you need to store a position or at least a delta for every vertex for every frame, much more data must be stored. While you can compress this a great deal, it is a limiting factor in the length of the animation.

If you have journeyed thus far and understand the foundation, you are ready to embark with me to a greater horizon; the future. Could it be possible to incorporate the flexibility of a hierarchy of objects with the good looks of a single mesh? As always, we want more! And much to our delight and fancy, we can have more. With 3D hardware becoming more common and ripping processors' speed, the sky is the limit (well, at least until we think of something else we want). Thus we get:

Deformation and realtime skinning of skeletons
Deformation and realtime skinning of skeletons