Victorian Dining Chair

[BlackThief]

I just wanted you to know, that I'm working on a victorian dining chair now. Not much to see yet, but I hope that I can post the first screenshots this evening.

[BlackThief]

ok first screen:

 

 

ATM it has about 4100 poly and there's nothing that could be done with normalmaps - too much IMO. Is there a way to "optimize" the model ? I just think that it should be possible to have the same quality with much less polys...

[Fingernail]

let's see the wireframe.

[DeepOmega]

The pads on the back and seat are totally normalable. Nice work tho.

[BlackThief]

yes but that wouldn't afe so much polys. as you can see on the wireframe, the back leg has far too much polys and I dunno why...

 

 

are there any tools or an option to reduce polys automatically ?

Edited November 29, 2004 by BlackThief

[DeepOmega]

are there any tools or an option to reduce polys automatically ?

 

Nope. Optimizing is an art form, which'll take some practice. You need an eye for what's necessary and what's not, where you have a little slack and where it's overly detailed. Can't give too much advice for Blender, tho, since I'm a Max man.

 

As for not saving many polys with normal mapping, I disagree. Each of those panels could be turned into two triangles, compared to over two dozen as is. Every polygon counts.

[BlackThief]

blame me - I dunno what I calculated last night - whatever :lol:

 

the model doesn't have 4000 polygones - it only has about 1000. I think I multiplied the triangles by 2 instead of divde them :lol:

 

 

So I think that I even can add some more detail - any suggestions ?

[Fingernail]

but you want the actual tri count. Tris are what the game renders.

[BlackThief]

yes, but people always think and talk in polygons

 

2000 triangles/1000 polys is quite alright, isn't it ?

 

BTW already started UV-mapping it, but I had to start again, cauze there was something missing on the model. I'm going to use the same texture as the coffeetable - there's so much space left and I can use the wood-texture for the chair as well. this way we'll safe memory

Edited November 30, 2004 by BlackThief

[Fingernail]

Arr!! good thinking.

 

And it'll give a more uniform, furniture-set like look to them.

[DeepOmega]

Tris = polys, for all intents an purposes. While in-program, you may have a polygon counter that is separate, when you report it, do so in terms of triangles.

 

Have fun UV mapping!

[Springheel]

One thing we should be aware of with the chairs is making sure they are all of the same height. If we are going to have animations that allow AI to sit in them, that would be necessary, right? Or is it done with collision physics?

 

This is an issue for any objects that will be usable by AI.

[sparhawk]

One thing we should be aware of with the chairs is making sure they are all of the same height. If we are going to have animations that allow AI to sit in them, that would be necessary, right? Or is it done with collision physics?

 

This is an issue for any objects that will be usable by AI.

In RL there are also different sized chairs. But of course a set of chairs should go together.

 

But you are right. We must think of the AI as well. Did Aln upload his noble man?

[Springheel]

It doesn't matter if they are the same size, as long as the seat is at the same height. Otherwise, when the AI sits down, they won't be in contact with the chair (or they will clip it). So dining chairs, medieval chairs, sofas, tree stumps, and anything else we want AI to be able to sit on should be the same height.

 

Same thing if we want animations of AI touching things on top of tables. The tables will all have to be the same height for it to look right. And I'm sure there are other examples.

[BlackThief]

yeah we'll have to agree on one seat-height.

anyway I found a nice, very profesional tool to reduce the triangle/poly count
same chair with only 528 triangles - that's 75% less !!! and I think it still doesn't look different to the one with 2000 triangles.
[img]http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/chair_wireframe2.jpg[/img]
ONE problem though - I only have a trial version and so I can't safe the model The tool is called SIM Rational Reducer - prize for standalone software: about 6000 $ - 3dsMax plugin about 600 $

maybe someone can find a way to get it on another way - you know what I mean

[sparhawk]

maybe someone can find a way to get it on another way - you know what I mean

Can you upload the demo to the FTP? I don't want to register there just to get the file.

[BlackThief]

here you can get it without registrating:

http://taylortrade.com/sim/rreval.zip

[DeepOmega]

Oh god. Please, please, please do not use that program. Please. look what it's doing to your corners! Look at the fanning you're getting! Better to use an overpolied model than THAT.

 

If you want, I can take a look at it and point out specific areas where it can be streamlined.

[BlackThief]

Oh god. Please, please, please do not use that program. Please. look what it's doing to your corners! Look at the fanning you're getting! Better to use an overpolied model than THAT.

 

If you want, I can take a look at it and point out specific areas where it can be streamlined.

I don't get it - what's wrong with the corners ?? The problem with the model is that there are some really unnecesarry faces (for example on the back chair-legs) that are even so small that it's a pain in the ass to UV-map it. I don't where they come from and I also don't know, how to handle this. I'm still a noob at modelling.

[Fingernail]

DeepO is talking about things which are bad and good game modelling practice. Things which improve performance.

 

Basically, any game engine likes nice neat rows of triangles which it can render all fairly easily. It doesn't like to have them all bunched up unevenly; it doesn't read well. Also it can lead to clipping problems, that sort of glitch.

[sparhawk]

Basically, any game engine likes nice neat rows of triangles which it can render all fairly easily. It doesn't like to have them all bunched up unevenly; it doesn't read well. Also it can lead to clipping problems, that sort of glitch.

The lightgem suffers from the same problem. I created now a much more streamlined gem for testing. Of course this will not look as good, but it should work. It has so many vertices concentrated in some areas and apparently even without any proper faces attached. Maybe somebody could take a look at it and clear it up.

[BlackThief]

I managed to redo the legs with the help of sparhawk, who taught me same basics, that I didn't know yet. This way I could reduce the triangle-count to exactly 600 and the chair still looks exactly the same That's 70% less triangles !

 

Now I can seriously start UV-mapping it.

[oDDity]

With simple geometric shapes such as a chair, it's just as well to rebuild the low poly mesh from scratch using the high res version as a template, it 's much neater. Remember, when using normals and spec maps you really don't need any detail whatsoever on the chair, just basic squares, rectangles and 4 sided pyramids.

For example the chair section I've marked in red need only contain 28 triangles, whereas that seems to have about 100.

The leg I marked in green only needs 12 triangles, the seat should only have 12, etc.

I reckon that entire low res chair should only have about 150 polys.

Feel free to get carried away with the high res object and pile on as many million polys as you desire, but the low res cage should be as low as possible, the RTShadow system in games like Doom don't like high poly counts.

Edited December 4, 2004 by oDDity

[BlackThief]

With simple geometric shapes such as a chair, it's just as well to rebuild the low poly mesh from scratch using the high res version as a template, it 's much neater. 

that's how I did the lowpoly-leg I'm pretty new to this modelling stuff, so it always takes me a while, till I figure out things like that. As I mentioned in the post before the complete chair now has exactly 600 triangles - (that's less than each back-leg of the high-poly version) that's low enough, isn't it ?

 

 

The leg I marked in green only needs 12 triangles, the seat should only have 12, etc.

 

maybe you can't see that, because of the perspective, but the green-leg isn't just a simple cube. At first it's a simple cube, then it get's smaller and at the end it get's thicker again

Edited December 4, 2004 by BlackThief

[BlackThief]

almost finished UV-mapping it ! I hope you guys like it....

 

of course this cries for a normalmap - especially the pads.

Edited December 4, 2004 by BlackThief