Mesh animation at directX - c++

Question

in my game project Im using the MD5 model files, but I feel I'm doing something wrong...
At every frame I update almost 30~40 animated meshes, (updating each joint and their respectives vertices) but doing like this im using always 25% of the CPU speed and my FPS always stay at 70~80 (when I should have 200~300).
I know that maybe I should use instancing but i dont know how to do this with animated meshes.
And even if I would use, as far as I know, this only works with the same meshes, but I need something around 30 different meshes for scene (and these would be repeated using instancing).
What I do every frame is, make the new skeleton for every animated mesh, put every joint at the new position (if the joint needs update) and update all vertices that should be updated.
My video card is ok, here is the update code:
bool AnimationModelClass::UpdateMD5Model(float deltaTime, int animation)
{
MD5Model.m_animations[animation].currAnimTime += deltaTime; // Update the current animation time
if(MD5Model.m_animations[animation].currAnimTime > MD5Model.m_animations[animation].totalAnimTime)
MD5Model.m_animations[animation].currAnimTime = 0.0f;
// Which frame are we on
float currentFrame = MD5Model.m_animations[animation].currAnimTime * MD5Model.m_animations[animation].frameRate;
int frame0 = floorf( currentFrame );
int frame1 = frame0 + 1;
// Make sure we don't go over the number of frames
if(frame0 == MD5Model.m_animations[animation].numFrames-1)
frame1 = 0;
float interpolation = currentFrame - frame0; // Get the remainder (in time) between frame0 and frame1 to use as interpolation factor
std::vector<Joint> interpolatedSkeleton; // Create a frame skeleton to store the interpolated skeletons in
// Compute the interpolated skeleton
for( int i = 0; i < MD5Model.m_animations[animation].numJoints; i++)
{
Joint tempJoint;
Joint joint0 = MD5Model.m_animations[animation].frameSkeleton[frame0][i]; // Get the i'th joint of frame0's skeleton
Joint joint1 = MD5Model.m_animations[animation].frameSkeleton[frame1][i]; // Get the i'th joint of frame1's skeleton
tempJoint.parentID = joint0.parentID; // Set the tempJoints parent id
// Turn the two quaternions into XMVECTORs for easy computations
D3DXQUATERNION joint0Orient = D3DXQUATERNION(joint0.orientation.x, joint0.orientation.y, joint0.orientation.z, joint0.orientation.w);
D3DXQUATERNION joint1Orient = D3DXQUATERNION(joint1.orientation.x, joint1.orientation.y, joint1.orientation.z, joint1.orientation.w);
// Interpolate positions
tempJoint.pos.x = joint0.pos.x + (interpolation * (joint1.pos.x - joint0.pos.x));
tempJoint.pos.y = joint0.pos.y + (interpolation * (joint1.pos.y - joint0.pos.y));
tempJoint.pos.z = joint0.pos.z + (interpolation * (joint1.pos.z - joint0.pos.z));
// Interpolate orientations using spherical interpolation (Slerp)
D3DXQUATERNION qtemp;
D3DXQuaternionSlerp(&qtemp, &joint0Orient, &joint1Orient, interpolation);
tempJoint.orientation.x = qtemp.x;
tempJoint.orientation.y = qtemp.y;
tempJoint.orientation.z = qtemp.z;
tempJoint.orientation.w = qtemp.w;
// Push the joint back into our interpolated skeleton
interpolatedSkeleton.push_back(tempJoint);
}
for ( int k = 0; k < MD5Model.numSubsets; k++)
{
for ( int i = 0; i < MD5Model.m_subsets[k].numVertices; ++i )
{
Vertex tempVert = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i];
// Make sure the vertex's pos is cleared first
tempVert.x = 0;
tempVert.y = 0;
tempVert.z = 0;
// Clear vertices normal
tempVert.nx = 0;
tempVert.ny = 0;
tempVert.nz = 0;
// Sum up the joints and weights information to get vertex's position and normal
for ( int j = 0; j < tempVert.WeightCount; ++j )
{
Weight tempWeight = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_weights[tempVert.StartWeight + j];
Joint tempJoint = interpolatedSkeleton[tempWeight.jointID];
// Convert joint orientation and weight pos to vectors for easier computation
D3DXQUATERNION tempJointOrientation = D3DXQUATERNION(tempJoint.orientation.x, tempJoint.orientation.y, tempJoint.orientation.z, tempJoint.orientation.w);
D3DXQUATERNION tempWeightPos = D3DXQUATERNION(tempWeight.pos.x, tempWeight.pos.y, tempWeight.pos.z, 0.0f);
// We will need to use the conjugate of the joint orientation quaternion
D3DXQUATERNION tempJointOrientationConjugate;
D3DXQuaternionInverse(&tempJointOrientationConjugate, &tempJointOrientation);
// Calculate vertex position (in joint space, eg. rotate the point around (0,0,0)) for this weight using the joint orientation quaternion and its conjugate
// We can rotate a point using a quaternion with the equation "rotatedPoint = quaternion * point * quaternionConjugate"
D3DXVECTOR3 rotatedPoint;
D3DXQUATERNION qqtemp;
D3DXQuaternionMultiply(&qqtemp, &tempJointOrientation, &tempWeightPos);
D3DXQuaternionMultiply(&qqtemp, &qqtemp, &tempJointOrientationConjugate);
rotatedPoint.x = qqtemp.x;
rotatedPoint.y = qqtemp.y;
rotatedPoint.z = qqtemp.z;
// Now move the verices position from joint space (0,0,0) to the joints position in world space, taking the weights bias into account
tempVert.x += ( tempJoint.pos.x + rotatedPoint.x ) * tempWeight.bias;
tempVert.y += ( tempJoint.pos.y + rotatedPoint.y ) * tempWeight.bias;
tempVert.z += ( tempJoint.pos.z + rotatedPoint.z ) * tempWeight.bias;
// Compute the normals for this frames skeleton using the weight normals from before
// We can comput the normals the same way we compute the vertices position, only we don't have to translate them (just rotate)
D3DXQUATERNION tempWeightNormal = D3DXQUATERNION(tempWeight.normal.x, tempWeight.normal.y, tempWeight.normal.z, 0.0f);
D3DXQuaternionMultiply(&qqtemp, &tempJointOrientation, &tempWeightNormal);
D3DXQuaternionMultiply(&qqtemp, &qqtemp, &tempJointOrientationConjugate);
// Rotate the normal
rotatedPoint.x = qqtemp.x;
rotatedPoint.y = qqtemp.y;
rotatedPoint.z = qqtemp.z;
// Add to vertices normal and ake weight bias into account
tempVert.nx -= rotatedPoint.x * tempWeight.bias;
tempVert.ny -= rotatedPoint.y * tempWeight.bias;
tempVert.nz -= rotatedPoint.z * tempWeight.bias;
}
// Store the vertices position in the position vector instead of straight into the vertex vector
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_positions[i].x = tempVert.x;
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_positions[i].y = tempVert.y;
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_positions[i].z = tempVert.z;
// Store the vertices normal
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].nx = tempVert.nx;
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].ny = tempVert.ny;
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].nz = tempVert.nz;
// Create the temp D3DXVECTOR3 for normalize
D3DXVECTOR3 dtemp = D3DXVECTOR3(0,0,0);
dtemp.x = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].nx;
dtemp.y = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].ny;
dtemp.z = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].nz;
D3DXVec3Normalize(&dtemp, &dtemp);
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].nx = dtemp.x;
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].ny = dtemp.y;
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].nz = dtemp.z;
// Put the positions into the vertices for this subset
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].x = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_positions[i].x;
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].y = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_positions[i].y;
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[i].z = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_positions[i].z;
}
// Update the subsets vertex buffer
// First lock the buffer
void* mappedVertBuff;
bool result;
result = MD5Model.m_subsets[k].vertBuff->Map(D3D10_MAP_WRITE_DISCARD, 0, &mappedVertBuff);
if(FAILED(result))
{
return false;
}
// Copy the data into the vertex buffer.
memcpy(mappedVertBuff, &MD5Model.m_subsets[k].m_vertices[0], (sizeof(Vertex) * MD5Model.m_subsets[k].numVertices));
MD5Model.m_subsets[k].vertBuff->Unmap();
}
return true;
}
Maybe I can fix some things in that code but I wonder if I'm doing it right...
I wonder also if there are other better ways to do this, if other types of animations would be better (different things from .x extension).
Thanks and sorry for my bad english :D
Doing bones transformation at shaders would be a good solution? (like this)

Answer 1

Are all of the meshes in the viewing frustum at the same time? If not you should only be updating the animations of the objects which are on screen and which you can see. If you're updating all the meshes in the scene regardless of if the are in view or not you are wasting a lot of cycles. It sounds to me like you are not doing any frustum culling at all that is probably the best place to start.