i cant answer for sure, but here are a couple of suggestions.

is the character mesh really high poly?

is the scene clean? by that i mean is there something left in the scene like objects, textures something in the stack that occurred as a result of making the character that doesn't need to be there anymore?

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

Does it slow down when you are animating the biped or is it during the physique stage only?.
maybe try using the skin modifier instead of physique.

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It's when animating as well as during the physique stage.

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If it does it with the skin modifier too I'm not sure what else to suggest. If you upload the scene I could see if it does the same thing for me.

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Yeah Skin is actually worse. Oh well, it isnt actually too bad now, it's just annoying as before it was fine. Could be that my character model isnt well made I guess? What would cause the slow-down in terms of the character mesh?

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Like I say, its hard to guess without taking a look at the scene.

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Any chance we could see the scene?

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

--Matt

yep here it is.

[Link to www.yousendit.com]

I know my character modelling skills arent amazing so maybe its something to do with that.

I think its just the model, because I just made another character and it works fine. The mesh for this magician has too many faces I think, so it takes ages Is there any quick way to reduce the poly count or do I have to go back and redo it all?

Possible to use something to reduce the poly count (the model is really high in polys) whilst animating, then remove that afterwards? Optimize seems like the best bet but its still slow with that on it.

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Yeah, its just way too high res. If you can find a version of the mesh before it was turbosmoothed and rig that you will have less headaches. there arent many options once you have collapsed the stack though. You could go through and reduce the polycount manually but it would probably be quicker just to remodel it really.

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Ok, cheers. I saved in stages so hopefully I can salvage something from it.

edit - yeah luckily I saved just a little before I collapsed the stack (thanks for reminding me of the correct terminology!), so I just needed to add a few features and its back to its old self only with less polys! I assume I can still use a smoothing modifier when I've rigged it and animated with no problems?

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Yeh, that won't be a problem.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

yeah, and if you right click the modifier and turn it "off in viewport" you get the performance in the viewport and the smoothing at render time. You can also set the render iterations up and not the viewport iterations but I find off in viewport seems to get better viewport speeds.

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Thanks guys, you're a great help Will post the video whenever its done.

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Cool, we're always keen to see some character animation

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

heres a link to the thread containing the finished animation - [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com]

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