How many frames per second should I animate at?

[Poet_11 (William K)]

@Angrytoilet;614419

Note: this was based on NTSC and PAL formats, and, im not 100% sure that applies to the application of animation for games. PAL and NTSC would be film formats and the difference is MASSIVE in that respect. Again, i can not think of a time when animation (for gaming) has the decision of “do you want this PAL or NTSC?”. I maybe wrong, since, im not a game animator on a professional level, so, take what i said there for a gain of sand. Unless i am right, then, im the smartest man aliiiiiiiiive!

29.97 is the standard (again, NTSC). Would you record and animate in 30 or 60 … ? Personal pref i think. I use all 60 and use the 1 tick for timing. 30 is “easier” on the system, but, its up to you. Depends on a lot of things. Have you tested 30 and 60 and seen the difference? Thats what i would do, take a look at how they “feel” side by side and see what feels more natural. Maybe small detailed movements would benefit from a 60, but, general movement would only really require 30… dont know. Just a guess. Would animation sequences be effected by someone, like myself, running 2x 1080GTX’s ? if the games “standard” is 30FPs, and, im playing at (random int) 55FPs, is it effected due to my system over the standard cap of animation (30FPS)? Then again, is the timings messed up if you used 60 FPS and i was playing at 119FPS?

Would putting a cap on FPS @ 30 work? I can tell you, you would have a lot of ****** off players @ a 30FPS cap. This isnt 1997 and your not (i hope) making Doom. Ya, the original lol. It honestly depends on what you are making tho, i believe.

So many questions … so many.

I think you misunderstand me, NTSC or Pal were given as examples for standards as so film. Games don’t have absolute standards as i also stated and that you could have many types of timelines for it. But preferable from what i’ve experienced and seen mostly 30 fps timeline is used over others to animate in external applications, and yes timing does change per frame basis when you start going over as in animating in 60 fps directly (timing as in sense of time for animators and frames required for a specific action), it is just not convenient, since 30 fps can easily be scaled up to 60 at any given time.

Now when it comes to games and fps there are 2 different things we are talking about here, fps in games has little to nothing to do with fps animation timeline in max or maya etc… these are different. So yes technically if you have 30 fps animated character in max it would easily run 200 fps in game or at 9 fps depending on your system or level performance etc… and when i mention to “lock Fps during import” it means locking the 30 fps of the animation itself and not locking the fps of the engine which is different and independent of this, I believe “locking” may be a bad term to use form my part, my apologies, it is called “Use default sample rate” in the fbx import settings in Unreal, this would preserve the integrity of the motion created at a specific sample rate /fps in max or Maya, I am still not sure why this isn’t checked by default but again with our tests we saw a much better fidelity and less animation deviations in the imported file when this is checked.

Hope this helps somewhat, but yes I have to agree it does get confusing.

P.S. For the record 30 fps lock for a game is not a bad thing or taboo as made up to be, for instance the latest God of War that was showcased runs just a little over 30 (it was even meant to be locked at 30). Same goes with countless other games actually locked or running below 40 fps especially for third person action adventure. and there are very good reasons for this. I must agree though that anything to do with fast paced first person shooters 60 fps would be the ideal target to hit.