Model with hard edges right?

[styx3d]

Hi I need your opinion about the geometry of this model of mine (made in 3ds Max). I need to export it to UDK, and I'm wondering if the count of polygons is good..

Do you think that 13760 are too many tris for this model?

It is prepared for looking good with Meshsmooth (you can see it in the second screenshot), because I've heard that if it looks good with meshsmooth, it will look good with one smoothing group as well..


What I want is to export the model to UDK, with a single smoothing group and without any normal map for the edges. So I want all the work for the edges in the geometry, without the help of the normal maps.

As I've seen in the examples of epic, this is the most common technique they used for working with hard edges. I explain and example of this technique at the end of this thread: http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=717604


Do you think I can reduce more the count of polygons?

Thanks



http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/918/wireframe1.jpg (http://img375.imageshack.us/i/wireframe1.jpg/)

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1108/wireframe2meshsmooth.jpg (http://img408.imageshack.us/i/wireframe2meshsmooth.jpg/)

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/3558/wireframe3detail.jpg (http://img693.imageshack.us/i/wireframe3detail.jpg/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

[styx3d]

I forgot to mention an important thing, that it is made by modular design, of course.
I attach a screenshot for illustrating it. The white color is only 1 wall repeated 4 times, and the columns are actually 1 only.

I am also thinking in save polygons taking only 1 part of the symmetrical model, this way I could make the UVs only for one part...

Do you think it is correct?

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/9562/modulardesign.jpg (http://img4.imageshack.us/i/modulardesign.jpg/)

[16bit]

Definitely reduce, that 13,000 polygons translates to about 26,000 triangles. Alot of it comes from the pillars, take some of those edge loops off. A building shouldn't need to be mesh smoothed at all.

[darthviper107]

I wouldn't do meshsmoothing at all on that. But what I would do is try to reuse things that are there more than once. For instance, the pillars--export that as one single pillar, then copy and paste the others within UDK. If it's a full pillar I'd split it in half since you don't seem to be showing the whole thing anyways. Then UDK wouldn't need to keep as much geometry in memory.

[BloodReyvyn]

I wouldn't do mesh smoothing at all either for this building, though here is a way I would optimize this particular mesh, as a 26,000 poly model (when converted to tris) for a simple building is just too much, here are my suggestions:

http://i837.photobucket.com/albums/zz293/BloodReyvyn/ModelSuggestions.jpg

[styx3d]

Thank you all for the answers. So I don't have to meshsmooth all the model, but sometimes I don't know how to do it in the right way.

I find particularly hard to use the chamfer tool of 3dsmax. Of course it would produce less polys, but I prefer to use the connect edges tool,.. But is a lot of work to control the topology with this tool, because you have to add a lot of edges, and then you will have to reduce them.. This is the workflow I find out easier for me.. I don't know if it is the right way..

Do you often use Chamfer instead?

I was checking the model and it had some duplicated pillars, so actually it has 12880.

BloodReyvyn thank you for the graphical explanation, much appreciated. Yeah definitely I will mirror the object in some parts. The pillars of course would be 1 only. The stairs I think it's a good a idea to do only a half and duplicated.

It's curious because in some cases the epic guys don't do a lot of pieces, maybe because of the slow workflow at the time of reassembling in UDK. You can find in the examples an entire model of a building, so, when you see it, you don't know what to do: Optimize polys vs fast workflow..

[styx3d]

It's curious because in some cases the epic guys don't do a lot of pieces, maybe because of the slow workflow at the time of reassembling in UDK. You can find in the examples an entire model of a building, so, when you see it, you don't know what to do: Optimize polys vs fast workflow..

An example of what I say (from the gow content, "GOW_SM_Tomb"). In this case they use an entire object, with the less polygons, and for the hard edges they use normal maps at this time.
Maybe at the end of the workflow they decided to do this because they had enough memory for doing it, i think..


http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/4729/gowarchtomb.jpg (http://img20.imageshack.us/i/gowarchtomb.jpg/)

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/3372/gowarchtombwire.jpg (http://img34.imageshack.us/i/gowarchtombwire.jpg/)

[BloodReyvyn]

Well, it does also boil down to how many visible objects will be in the map, and how each mesh is LOD'ed.

Remember that there is a finite number of Static Mesh objects you can have in one map/level (somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000). So what to do if you need 9000? Time to start consolidating into larger meshes.

So, if there are objects (like the tomb) that are mostly hidden except when you are in a certain area, it may be fine to use one big mesh. But if that asset can be seen from far away, but only the roof of it, it may be better to make that roof a separate object.

Epic's assets are a good example. If you poke around in GoW and UT3, you will see a lot of Pieces of meshes AND also the whole meshes comprised of those parts. This gives them the best of both worlds, so they can have all of the bits they need, no matter how many meshes it may be. But, in the end, it's up to the Level Designer to really test, crunch the numbers, and make some compromises if performance is lacking in certain areas.

[Xendance]

There isn't any magical max number of static meshes you can have on your level afaik. There's the number of rendered objects, which should be about 1000 max (at least I remember that UDN said so), and then the overall performance of the level. Everything else, in my opinion, is up to the level designer to do. Just keep measuring the performance and see if you can do what you want withing the given restrictions.

[styx3d]

Thank you very much for the information :) I didn't know about the limitations on the number of objects.

This is the final object composed by parts, I think I could divide it in more parts but I don't need it because I'm not going to reuse these pieces anymore. I've optimised the geometry more, removing a lot of unnecessary edge loops. For almost all the edges I've used 3 edge loops, I think for hard edges it's the minimum.

I am wondering about the edges in the base. Should I add edges there? I heard this is the right way for good shading but it would add more tris, and I don't see it in objects like the tomb..

[BloodReyvyn]

There isn't any magical max number of static meshes you can have on your level afaik. There's the number of rendered objects, which should be about 1000 max (at least I remember that UDN said so), and then the overall performance of the level. Everything else, in my opinion, is up to the level designer to do. Just keep measuring the performance and see if you can do what you want withing the given restrictions.

Well, it may have been fixed since UT3, but UT3 definitely had a maximum number of meshes you could add to your map before the map would actually crash and then never load again. It was in the neighborhood of 8,200, so quite a few... and with level streaming, I see no need to have that many meshes in any one map unless you are trying to make a really detail-littered map.

[Xendance]

Well, it may have been fixed since UT3, but UT3 definitely had a maximum number of meshes you could add to your map before the map would actually crash and then never load again. It was in the neighborhood of 8,200, so quite a few... and with level streaming, I see no need to have that many meshes in any one map unless you are trying to make a really detail-littered map.

That could just be that you ran out of memory. Now with the 64 bit executable it might could be better.

[BloodReyvyn]

Maybe, but I had 8 GB of memory at the time (only have 4 now, stupid cheap surge protector...). You would notice a rapid drop in performance after about 6,000 meshes, but in UDK I have a map that has over 6,500 meshes and it doesn't even lag much (FPS = 48-80) so I am thinking that it was a previous UE version limitation. When I hit the 8,000 mark I'll know for sure.

It makes me curious to see if they fixed the navigation point limitations, which was around the same number of nav points. After about 8,000 or so (depending on if you were using VolumePathnode Actors) you'd start getting a lot of path errors and/or crashes when trying to build nav paths. I'm not needing a whole lot of navigation points at the moment anyway, so I have no reason to even try it... and I think we've stayed off-topic long enough.

It is nice to know that UDK is a lot more optimized than UT3's/GoW's version of the engine though.

[styx3d]

Come on guys I need your help, I need to know if the topology of my model is correct...

[BloodReyvyn]

Whether or not that is really necessary is debatable, but personally, I would say why not add a couple extra tris... I mean really it's only 2 triangles to make a rectangle.

I often break larger meshes into just a couple of extra triangles just to get better lighting, since a lot of your lighting is based on how the vertices (sp?) are receiving light.

Overall, it's looking good. :)

[styx3d]

Thanks, I know that is only 2 tris more in this case, but I mean to add more edge loops wherever the edges of the other piece are connected.

In this case of the base, the problem is that I made it as a separated object. And, AFAIK, I think, the "right" method should be like if all would be made as one entire object and then break the geometry in parts..
But this would add much more edges in the base, and I didn't know if it is really a necessary rule in depend on some cases..


On the other hand, if I remove these 2 edges there are some problems because of the bad location of the triangles. I need to keep at least one.

I am gonna put it in my demo reel, so I don't want to put anything wrong there.


So conclusion, it's okay like that..Thank you :)