I am in the process of prototypin a new title and would appreciate comments, suggestions and advice about how to approach the issue of character ragdoll, primarily to do with physics (actual or faked) when killing a character.

In other words how to deform the model, handle bone collisions with other models, terrains and so forth. What is the best approach to ensure lower overheads on GPU etc.

I am not looking for someone to script this for me, just some insight into pitfalls, good methodology and so on.

TIA for your input