Subject:
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Re: Seemingly insane poly counts in official games - how?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Wed, 22 Jun 2005 16:36:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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1769 times
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That is an interesting idea. For BrickSpace, the game mod I’m making, it
crossed my mind briefly that people might be able to use a special parts library
to create easily importable models for the game. Sort of along the same lines
as what you’re saying, though to a more refined degree. I wouldn’t know how to
implement it, and I’m not sure it would even be worth it, considering the kinds
of optimisations I had to make on my custom models.
-Stefan-
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Seemingly insane poly counts in official games - how?
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| (...) IIRC someone did do a mod to Simcity that turned the buildings into LEGO ones. I remember that simcity came with its own building designer, but IIRC these were somehow imported from LDraw. (I'm NOT a techie guy, and you know that, so forget (...) (19 years ago, 22-Jun-05, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
| | | Re: Seemingly insane poly counts in official games - how?
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| (...) Hmm, How many poly's in that model? and what game is it a mod for? Balancing poly budgets in games is a non-trivial problem, how you do it is very dependant on the game, how many instances of a model is the game expected to render at once? how (...) (19 years ago, 22-Jun-05, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Seemingly insane poly counts in official games - how?
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| (...) 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 (...) (19 years ago, 22-Jun-05, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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