Animation optimization (questions)

When I have 100 animations on-screen, I get 48-50 fps. When I turn off the animation component on all my units, I get 65-67 fps. To me, this is pretty significant. But perhaps this is normal?

As far as I know, the lower your fps gets, the amount it takes to drop your framerate by one frame per second multiplies (takes more stress on the cpu/gpu to drop it each frame), thus each frame drop is pretty significant the lower your fps gets. So perhaps this amount of framerate drop with 100 animations on-screen is expected? Does anyone know if this is the case?


Are there any scripting techniques/optimizations I can use to drastically reduce the amount of "hurt" animations put on my cpu/gpu?

Here is how I'm scripting the animations currently, most of them are in the Update() function as in the example from Unity's scripting reference page:

Code (csharp):

1. if (animComponent.enabled == true  GetComponent(Attack).attacking == false) {
2.                 if(animComponent["footman2idle"]){
3.                     animComponent.CrossFade("footman2idle");//My footman2 animation
4.                 }
5.                 if(animation["ARCH_combat_mode"]){
6.                     animation.CrossFade("ARCH_combat_mode");//My Archer animation
7.                 }
8.                 if(animation["Idle"]){
9.                     animation["Idle"].speed = 1.5;
10.                     animation.CrossFade("Idle");//Red Dragon animation
11.                 }
12.                
13.                 //Debug.Log("Playing animation 1");
14.                 //animation.CrossFade ("Take 001");
15.             }

My main goal, is to try to fit as many animations on-screen as I possibly can, without too much noticeable game-lag. So far, animations seem to be my "bottleneck" in terms of gameplay. I'm not sure if it's the animations themselves, or if it's how I'm scripting the animations to play?

I don't have Unity pro, so I don't have the profiler (which I really want). So I can't pinpoint exactly what it is in the animations or my animation scripting that's so expensive cpu-wise.

 

I forgot to add, the amount of work the renderer is doing remains the same whether or not I turn off the animation component on my units, it's just the "main thread" which is affected significantly. Which makes me think it's all cpu/scripting related.

I feel like calling animation.Play() every update is a bad idea, but that's how the scripting reference has it. How might I get good animations transitions if I don't call the animation.Crossfade() every update though?

 

All of my characters have colliders and rigidbodies. I don't think the bones (in the character's rigs) have colliders at all, so I think I'm good on that point.

As for animation curves, I actually have no idea what those actually do (although I've read about them briefly), or how to modify them. I created my models in Blender, and rigged them with an addon that automatically generates the rig. I animated them as well, but never had to mess with animation curves. So I have no idea if, or how, I should modify them.

I know you're correct about the number of bones. I was just hoping not to have to modify my characters rigs, but if that is the best option, I will. Will lowering my polygon/vertex count on my character's meshes help with animations in that regard as well? Thanks superpig.

 

yes there are

let's start with editing that code..

first of.. You don't need to recheck every if statement, because if one of them is true, the others are false (am I right?)
ALSO the GetComponent Function is rather intensive (in your terms)

you can avoid to keep getting the component by declaring it once in the start/awake function

so the final code will be

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. Attack attackScript;
3. void Start()
4. {
5.  attackScript = this.GetComponent<Attack>();
6. }
7.  
8. if (animComponent.enabled == true  attackScript.attacking == false) {
9.                 if(animComponent["footman2idle"]){
10.                     animComponent.CrossFade("footman2idle");//My footman2 animation
11.                 }
12. else if(animation["ARCH_combat_mode"]){
13.                     animation.CrossFade("ARCH_combat_mode");//My Archer animation
14.                 }
15. else if(animation["Idle"]){
16.                     animation["Idle"].speed = 1.5;
17.                     animation.CrossFade("Idle");//Red Dragon animation
18.                 }
19.             }

a last thing you can do as improvement (but it won't be much) is changing the strings you use to find a animation to animationclips, Because it needs to parse the string first now and then find the animation and then use it.. while this overhead isn't very much, it's still overhead that can be avoided.. (by using the direct animationclips)

you can declare all animationclips in the start function (which will increase first-load time(by maybe 0,0005 secs?) but will help with average frame performance