The number of poligons per object

Voidguide on 6/4/2005 at 21:45

I have a tree that is made of about 1200 polygons, but it looks craggy, so the question is how many poligons per object can be used while costructing something for TDS?

Voidguide on 7/4/2005 at 03:01

I guess, I should be more specific, I mean the maximum number of poligons per object. I looked through the static meshes in TDS and I noticed that they are made of no more than 700-800 poligons on the average, so I thought it might be due to the limitations of the engine. But still may be it's possible to make more detailed objects without any loss of game speed. Any suggestions?

godismygoldfish on 7/4/2005 at 03:46

Quote Posted by Voidguide

The number of poligons per object

Not to be an ass, but it's Polygons.

Voidguide on 7/4/2005 at 07:01

Thanks for showing the mistake, I'll mark it well. But it's not quite to the point...

Ziemanskye on 7/4/2005 at 09:16

I haven't in any way tested it, but I don't think there is a hard limit to StaticMesh polygons. I guess the ones in game are capped around 700 because of the lower screen resolution and small amount of memory on the Xbox version. In one of the other threads I think someone posted a single StaticMesh that had about 140,000 polys, though he admitted that wasn't any good for playing.

[edit] Cut into chunks because he had trouble with Smeshes over 10,000 polys, but check out Jermi's work here:
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91953&page=2)

And if it's a tree, remember the ones they built had seperate trunk and leaves meshes - an approach to maybe consider if you want more detail. Well, that and normal maps. :thumb:

Komag on 7/4/2005 at 21:28

I think the answer is to definitely become and expert at texturing, esp with normals and speculars and whatever else there is. Good textures can more than make up for relatively low poly models, and you get much better performance in the end result.

bukary on 7/4/2005 at 21:34

Quote Posted by Voidguide

I looked through the static meshes in TDS and I noticed that they are made of no more than 700-800 poligons on the average

How can I find out how many polygons the static mesh in TDS is made of?

Gestalt on 8/4/2005 at 04:14

As far as normal maps go, you're best off modeling a high-poly, high detail object and then generating a normal map from that. Then you map it onto the low-poly version. That requires a significant amount of skill at high-poly modelling, though, so it's not exactly the easiest option unless you're an excellent modeller to begin with.

Re: Trees.

If the branches, leaves and trunk are separate meshes, you can improve performance and whatnot by a fair bit, I'd imagine. By making about three branches or so and scaling/rotating a bunch of copies in the editor, you should be able to take advantage of the geometry instancing thing, so the engine only has to keep one copy of each of the three branches in memory. It also means you can have greater variation in your trees, if you take the time necessary to tweak branch placement. A few low-poly objects used many times over > one really high-poly object. As far as performance is concerned, that is.

Voidguide on 8/4/2005 at 05:05

Thanks, guys. I have learnt something new for myself from your posts.

to bukary
in the "Stats" section, under "Skins".