Importing high poly count model from Maya. Beginner.

[davidck]

Hi there, I'm a beginner to both UDK and Modeling. Had taken a intro course in Maya using NURBS before and played with UDK following some tutorials making levels. So nothing really advance.

Recently, I've taken the task in producing a proof of concept using UDK for a building model showcase. Allow 3d flythrough of a building, zoom to it, etc...

As a proof of concept, we've purchased a skyscraper model. First thing I noticed was that I couldn't just directly import .mb files, I had to export it as .fbx first.
Then, when I tried importing it into the content browser, it said polycount was too high (>65000) and eventually by toggling on some options, it actually separate the static mesh in 1/2.

My ideal solution would be to downscale the model to a workable state. It doesn't need to preserve the extreme fidelity the model provides by default.

Could anyone give me a clear direction as to how to proceed? Thanks!

[darthviper107]

You need to go back to Maya and separate out the model into pieces, remove any uncessary details. Of course it all depends on how detailed the skyscraper is. You don't want a single mesh to have a too high poly count especially if it's big because then it always has to be loaded into memory even if a good part of it isn't visible. And another way to improve performance is that if you've got an object that's used a lot you can export it once and then place the object in UDK, this will keep just one copy of the mesh in memory but you can place as many copies as the graphics card can handle, this is called instancing.