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Subject: 
Re: Seemingly insane poly counts in official games - how?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad
Date: 
Wed, 22 Jun 2005 09:42:13 GMT
Viewed: 
1763 times
  
In lugnet.cad, Stefan Garcia wrote:
   For the most part you’re right, and that’s something I had not realized. However, there are a few instances that I’ve seen in Lego Island, Island 2, where an ingame model actually has studs.

Lately of course, there is the new SW game:



So I suppose that’s the game I’d be focusing on.

-Stefan-

I’m guessing it is because each in game object is a single instanced mesh that has been severely optimised rather than a collection of individual part and subpart meshes that are all being drawn regardless of whether they are visible or not (which is the case with LDraw Models).

Consider the case of a simple static model consisting of two 2x4 bricks, one stacked directly on top of the other.

If we flatten the model hierarchy so that it is just a collection of polygons, rather than a nested tree of sub models we can start removing individual triangles that are hidden.

All of the internal detail of the top brick (including the rectangular rim on the bottom face) will never be seen and can be stripped out of the model. We can also remove all the studs and the top face of the lower brick.

This has already reduced our poly count significantly.

Another optimisation would be to find coplanar polygons and merge them. (I’m not convinced Lego are doing this in their games, there appears to be a seam between some of the bricks). For example in our two brick model each of the four vertical outside faces can be merged (assuming the bricks are the same colour) from two quads (i.e 4 tris) to a single pair of tris.

In this trivial example the reduced model ends up equivilent to a single tall 2x4 brick! We’ve achieved a 50% reduction. The more bricks you stack up the more you save.

In theory it should be possible (although not necessarily easy) to do some of this automatically for Ldraw models.

In practice however the hairiness of the Ldraw dataset (BFC issues and the fact that parts weren’t authored with this sort of brutality in mind) make it much more difficult than it should be.

Cheers Tim



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Seemingly insane poly counts in official games - how?
 
(...) Well, you're partially right, but the amount of polys per model would still be ridicilous (sp?) due to the tubes and studs still existent on the top and bottom. (URL) (...) That is an interesting idea. For BrickSpace, the game mod I'm making, (...) (19 years ago, 22-Jun-05, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
  Re: Seemingly insane poly counts in official games - how?
 
(...) One way to do this would be project rays through a model, selecting rays with random angles. Keep track of which polygons in the model initially (and finally) intersect the ray -- these polygons are visible. Repeat this process for enough (...) (19 years ago, 22-Jun-05, to lugnet.cad, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Seemingly insane poly counts in official games - how?
 
For the most part you're right, and that's something I had not realized. However, there are a few instances that I've seen in Lego Island, Island 2, where an ingame model actually has studs. Lately of course, there is the new SW game: (URL) So I (...) (19 years ago, 22-Jun-05, to lugnet.cad, FTX)

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