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Animation and memory issue

To: REALbasic Games <realbasic-games at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: Animation and memory issue
From: Lo Saeteurn <realbasic at miensoftware dot com>
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 19:12:40 -0700
Delivered-to: realbasic-games at lists dot realsoftware dot com
As you all probably know, I'm creating my own animation engine.

Now I have a problem with memory. Sure it is very memory efficient when you have only 1 animation object, but the problem arises when you want to have multiple models that animate at the same time:

When you clone an Object3D, the geometry and texture data are shared. With animated objects, you can't share geometry because changing one affects the other. So if I morph the points in one copy of that model, all copies of that model will morph as well. If a character is in the run state, every other model will be forced into the run state or will jump to all sorts of crazy poses.

It would be simple to copy both the texture and geometry by using the .AddShapeFromString, but that hogs an impractical amount of memory.

To solve this problem, I would have to separate the geometry and share only the textures. I have no idea how to take texture from an existing Object3D and share it with another. Also, I would need to copy just the geometry from an Object3D and add it into a new Object3D.

If I can solve this issue, we will all benefit because now we can easily add animation to our game that uses just a bit more memory (60% more) than a non-animating object (same texture memory usage).

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