Streaming 3D characters over low-bandwidth line

Question

Hi,

I'm looking for some protocol or approach to stream a single 3D character (might be even low-poly) from a server to a client + simple animation for the character.

Example - a monster + simple animation for his "roar". The animation is also 3D and uses the 3D character only.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The usual approach to this would be to packetize your model data and animation data. The Engine needs to be able to accept the new data as it arrives, and your streaming code needs to present the blocks to the engine as they complete.

I do however have to ask if this is actually the problem you want to solve. Animation data compresses pretty tight in most cases and is very likely to be smaller than the model data - unless of course it's a really long anim.