Jerboa's Models

[SneaksieDave]

The actual model feedback I have is consistent across all of them (and part of the gripe is due to my nature, so take it with salt): polycounts, polycounts, polycounts. There's no reason a small cylinder (e.g. panflute) can't be a rectangle. Or a larger one (an organ pipe), an octohedron. We do this with patches in the map editor all the time, using square cylinders. Rounded sides and tapered edges can be achieved with smoothing and materials. Sometimes it's okay for a scene to contain an item or two with a high count, but they do add up, and reduce a mapper's ability to add map detail.

 

I'll reference a bell I made back in the stone age:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...ost&p=83650

 

It's only got 12 sides (I could've, and maybe should've gone higher), but unless you're looking specifically at the edge, it looks round. All of the detail -- the trimming, the rivets, the scrollwork -- is in the material, none of it is modeled. Now imagine that on a much smaller scale; it wouldn't matter at all if a panflute pipe was 4 sided, maybe even 3. Look at the heads of the original Doom3 characters. They're a pretty extreme example, and I think id should've bumped it up. But still, unless you're looking for it, you don't really notice.

 

Edit: Almost forgot: also, they appear faceted (e.g., the cauldron), though I haven't seen them for myself in game besides screenshots yet. Are you enabling smoothing? ASE supports it, and I believe LWO does as well. With it, most of the roundness detail and poly cost isn't needed.

[Jerboa]

I agree with the point on keeping things as low as possible. I could drop those cylinders to 6 sided instead of 8.

 

As far as smoothing goes. Im working with a new app. Ultimate wrap3d pro and so far as I can see, it doesnt have a smooth/smoothing normals. If it does it isnt transfering over when I save it. I'll e-mail tech support on that.

 

I do have a lower version of the cauldran. I need to scale the lip down.

[SneaksieDave]

If it turns out to be unable to do smoothing, you might be able to export it to a format Blender ( free, http://blender.org ) can import, and then apply it using that.

[Jerboa]

I just e-mailed support on the smoothing issue.

 

I'll stop production with the cauldran and go back thru everything. I know certain places where I can decrease the sides. ie..the noose doesnt need to be at 8 sides and bring bolts down to a flat low sided cylinders. ect..

 

I'll use blender for smoothing if it comes down to that.

[Jerboa]

At 224 polys here is the noose.

[Springheel]

Sometimes it's okay for a scene to contain an item or two with a high count, but they do add up, and reduce a mapper's ability to add map detail.

 

I thought we had established that the polycount of the visible mesh was not a big problem as long as it had a cm and shadowmesh?

[SneaksieDave]

It's true, less demand than without those optimizations, but consider extreme examples to make the point, or consider it a sliding continuum. If 70k polys in a scene is fine for user's System X, then what about 80k? Sure, it's still fine. But the author wants 100k. Or one more light source would really spice things up. But object_Z contains 12k polys, so that's going to cost a bit... going to have to optimize brushwork some. But then, what about user's System X-1? It still runs, but at 12 FPS instead of 18.

 

The overall general point of principle is: everything that must be rendered requires some bit of CPU/GPU. It adds up. If one object has 2X too many polys, then a scene with ten such objects is in trouble. Why be wasteful, when it can look just as good, efficiently, by using established methods designed specifically to do so? The more efficient modelers and mappers are, the more detail they can put into a scene.

 

Edit: jeez, I edited this like 15 times to try to say that

[Jerboa]

No worries, I wasnt happy w/the noose being so high either. So I played and crafted the noose out of cubes then slowly added the details. The end result 416 polys.

[Springheel]

No offense, but that looks nowhere near as good as your previous version. You can't just cut polys; you have to apply a normalmap or some serious smoothing to keep it looking right.

[Baddcog]

I agree that it is good to try and keep things low but I think we also want to keep a certian amount of detial so it doesn't look last gen.

 

Certainly there are places where polys count less then others.

 

The general rule of thumb for low poly is always ' if it doesn't add to the siloutte then it's wasted polys. This still holds true with higher poly stuff, especially now that normal maps play such a big part in game models. You can add tons more detail but you still need to keep anything adding to silouttes (I know I spelled wrong 2x)

 

I think things like pots and cauldrons need more sides than fewer. A 20 sided pot looks round, a 10 sided pot can sufice, but kindof low. I think the lowest we should go if 14 sides, but that's my opinion.

Lower does look round with smoothing, until you look at the ends, then you see the individual sides and they can start to look low poly.

 

There are tricks that can fake this pretty good though.

 

For example, if your pot is 20 sides around and 3 segments high. Leave the top and bottom 20 sides, but the middle verts can be welded down to fewer sides (easier to do even number so we'll say 10).

Now add smooth and from most angles it will look round from middlw and top/bottom but alot of uneeded polys have been cut.

 

This also works really well for shadow meshes. Rarely does a round pole need a round shadow mesh. Usually a square will work, especially if it's something like a light post that has a cap that will hide the 4 sided pole shadow. 3 sides can even work good in alot of instances.

[Jerboa]

I could change out the low poly noose knot with the shelled out toruses on the original noose and save an average of 200 polys compared to the original.

 

Also, Im checking into that app xnormal. Currently I just use the normal map plug-in from gimp.

 

Some good did come out of this make and thats a low poly shadow mesh made from cubes lol.

[Baddcog]

You could even further optimize that shadow and get the same results in game.

 

Just weld all the iside verts to each other (the closest corresponding vert) and you'll actually have a triangular cross section instead of square. Get rid of quite a few polys and it will cast almost the same shadow.

 

Once you get normals down you could almost use that model right there as the ingame model, but with the normals cast from your hi-poly. It would look very close to your hi-poly. although I'd probably say use at least a 5 sided rope at very least. (that's if your on a complete poly crunch, otherwise 8 would be sufficient I think)

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Now that you have SVN access I suggest you check out PinkDot's ship lamp model (it has carvings of ladies around it). I think that is probably the best example of normal map usage we have. oDDities AI are great but more complicated so harder to see the benefits maybe.

 

The ship lamp is really quite a simple in game model but the hi-poly/normal map is amazing and it really shows what can be accomplished. I haven't come close to the detail it has on any of my stuff yet (I've only done normals for Dark Mod so far in the last year or so). Most of my normals have come from photoshop.

[Jerboa]

For SVN access I need the correct server address. Can anybody help w/that?

I have my user name.

Not sure if he used the password I suggested.

[Tels]

For SVN access I need the correct server address. Can anybody help w/that?

I have my user name.

Not sure if he used the password I suggested.

 

https://darkmod.homelinux.com/svn/darkmod/trunk

[greebo]

Jerboa: please have a look at these articles to get some instructions on how to checkout the SVN repository:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php/SVN

[Jerboa]

I was able to gain entry using my browser. But, Tortoise has been conflicting with my paintshop pro 10. I get an error when I try to open a file ie.."can't find img" when I double click on it. Also, it appears to slow my system down abit.

 

I've tried using Blender. But, unless it has a .lwo plugin I dont know about. It wont import .lwo for smoothing.

 

Xnormal looks like a good program and I might be using it wrong. But, I get smears and even a break when I use it. ie.. image below. This was done with xnormal.

[greebo]

Hm, maybe your models (hi-poly and low-poly) are not aligned? The low-poly model needs to approximate the hi-poly model as good as possible, and their positions need to match. If the one model resides at the world origin, the other model needs to do that as well.

 

I'll have a look at Lightwave, I think you can turn on smoothing in the Surface Editor, can't you?

[Springheel]

Yes, you just check the smoothing box in the surface editor.

[Baddcog]

Can't say what's happening there although I am aware some people were having weird issues with XNormal before. I think he just released an update yesterday or day before that is supposed to be better.

 

Other things to watch out for it that your low poly is inside your high, you don't want the polys to overlap. You also don't want any overlaps on your UV layout. All polys must have their own uv space.

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Something else worth mentioning.

 

If you are just using a highpoly normal to smooth that out you're not going to see much benefit. Smoothing groups will take care of that.

 

You want to use the normals to make things like intricate carvings, chips, bumps on the surface of the low poly. So you could have a 20,000 poly caldron with all kinds of detail and your 300 poly model would almost look the same in game.

[Jerboa]

I utilized Lightwave3d and was able to smooth properly. Sad thing is, its on a 30 day free trial.

[Springheel]

The smoothing is much better.

 

The cauldron itself doesn't look very believable as a cauldron for two reasons. One, it's not stable--with no legs and a fairly round bottom it looks like it could easily tip over at a moment's notice. Two, the stuff in it kind of looks like lava, rather than any believable liquid.

 

I utilized Lightwave3d and was able to smooth properly. Sad thing is, its on a 30 day free trial.

 

PM me and we can take care of that.

[Jerboa]

Here is the cauldron sitting at 630 polys triangulated w/ends ect...deleted.

Is this a good enough poly rating for the structure? Or should I remove or re-work the handles? Should I go with more of a cylindrical shape?

[Springheel]

That's probably ok. Our existing cauldron model is 542 polys.

[Jerboa]

Doh, wish I would of known that there was an existing one. I'll check the repository 1st from now on.

[Jerboa]

Here is the sickle w/a simplified handle. Total count 241 polys.

I was not happy w/the edge so I re-worked it.