Character Mesh Help

[n0mad23]

I'm playing around in unfamiliar ground here, and wonder if any of you have some advice.

Does anyone know what actually qualifies as a "low-poly" character? I've seen numbers as high as 1,000 faces being called such.

I've been reducing the faces on one of my pilots, and to my surprise there's really no significant difference in the file size between the original object and my optimized one. Am I missing something here?

For example, here's the shirt in its draft form:

And after I've merged faces:

In the first, Anim8or reports there are 1398 faces. In the second, 428.

Is this sufficient?

 

[GregBurch]

As I understand it, you may not be getting any real optimization by doing what you're doing. When you export to 3ds to then convert to msh, those rectangles will be defined by triangles. You'll end up with the same number of triangles, if I'm right.

 

[n0mad23]

What's more important - polygon count, or mesh size? Here, obviously I mean in terms of Orbiter performance?

 

[Hielor]

GregBurch is correct. Orbiter only supports triangles in its mesh format, so those two meshes will be identical when Orbiter gets them, with the possible exception that some some triangles may not be the same (depending on how the exporter triangulates the surfaces).

What do you mean by "mesh size"?

Loading time will be determined by mesh size on disk. Runtime performance will be determined by polygon count. However, size on disk is closely related to polygon count, so...yeah.

Notice how you have some surfaces in your "optimized" mesh that appear to be quads, but actually have vertices in the middle of edges? Remove those vertices.

 

[Coolhand]

Judge the weight of your meshes by triangle count, not poly. rendering engines break models into triangles before rendering. Basically if you remove half the triangles from your object it should weigh slightly more than half as much.

I can tell by your screenshot that your optimisation technique is totally whack. sorry, basically you're leaving vertexes in where you shouldn't , so instead of say 'merging' 4 squares and getting one square made of 2 triangles you're getting one square made of 6 or more triangles. all the merging is really doing is to get rid of lines to make a bigger poly, but those polys are still made of lots of triangles, which is all orbiter or any other rendering engine cares about. And things like that brick pattern you've got are a no no, try and make regular patterns of squares and edge loops where possible.

Hope that helps.

 

[n0mad23]

Coolhand,

Edge loops is exactly the advice I was looking for. Funny how if you don't know the language how hard it is to ask the question.

I think I know now how best to approach the problem, though it seems like it'll be best to start from scratch.

 

[ar81]

Mesh Wizard tells you how many triangles you have in your mesh.
Once you know how many, you may think of this...

0 to 10k - Low
10k to 30k - Medium
30k to 90 - High
90k and up - Very high

Also, try to get rid of useless vertices if you can.
I recommend to read MW manual for optimization.
Sometimes optimization is not desired.

 

[n0mad23]

I think I've got a handle on the situation - finally! Thanks gang for letting me "process out loud," and giving me such useful tips.

Here's my original:

The face count according to Anim8or is 2,826.

The same object after whacking out polygon after polygon:

According to Anim8or, it's now down to 359 faces! Ugly, but definitely a greatly reduced poly count. Similarly, the .3ds file is down from 97k to 18k.

Here's with the textures applied:

I think with a bit of tweaking of the vertices, it should look a bit better than it does now.

Since the characters will only be visible through the cockpit's windows (anyone else want to write "windshield?"), I think the body will be all right. I'm a bit concerned that should I eventually create a VC the model won't stand up to close scrutiny.

Still, I'm pleased with the progress with the last attempts.

What do you all think? Have I reduced the polygon count too much?

 

[ar81]

To me it looks great. I would not be worried about the low poly count, for if you make a whole vessel you might not want its parts to have too many polys. Your mesh looks great. The way to go with games is low poly and high detail textures.

 

[Black dog]

:speakcool: and again :speakcool:

an epitome of sartorial elegance