BC poly limit

[Villain]

Perhaps I'll elaborate, I was speaking generally. In BC? It's a 4 year old game, what do you expect?

[limey BSc.]

It happens that I know this kind of thing fairly thoroughly, and you can trust that I hold a certain degree of intellectual authority in this matter.

Pop quiz: What the highest number of polys you can get one one ship in BC on a mid end machine with no lag?

[rengers]

Like already said, the polycount of a ship depends on the textures. BC can handle high polycounts much better than high res textures. When you want to do a ship with high res textures (multiple 2048x2048 maps) it's best when you hear on DJ.
Though when you go with low res textures, you can go much further than 15k...

Personally I try to stick below 15k and go for high res textures.

@limey: when i remember right, the deadalus of the upcoming ultimate stargate pack have around 200k, Is that right?

[limey BSc.]

@limey: when i remember right, the deadalus of the upcoming ultimate stargate pack have around 200k, Is that right?

Yup, 220k. Works with no lag on a mid end machine. And thats just as high as its gone so far!

[Nebula]

how well does it damage?

IIRC the higher the poly count the harder BC has to work to damage it.

[limey BSc.]

how well does it damage?

IIRC the higher the poly count the harder BC has to work to damage it.

I don't think Dave ever said if it damages ok.

[DJ Curtis]

Fine, so you can plug in hundreds of thousands of polygons into BC's engine, even on a mid-range PC. (Which is what, these days, exactly?)

I had a conversation with Cord, who has managed to get as many as 800k into the game...  a highly unstable game.

I did not claim to know everything, I claimed to have some intellectual authority.  There are plenty of reasons why any good modeler in BC is economical about polygon use...

1. High numbers of polygons have been shown to make the game unstable.

2. Ships do not damage properly when they start having many tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands of polygons.

3. A lot of people out there still use older PC's, probably many more than we think.  They should be able to enjoy the game too.

4. Due to the nature of BC's lighting rig, objects with too many edges look strange under direct light and weapons glow because the brightness goes through the mesh.  There are no true shadows.  An object in BC will almost always look better flat and smooth with a convincing set of textures.

5. Due to the nature of BC's camera, you can not get very close to a ship without the mesh starting to disappear.  This means that using an excessive number of polygons, particularly in small areas on on small pieces of the mesh, is wasteful of system resources.

6. Making one ship tens of thousands of polygons quickly begins to add up if people want to play large battles.  All of a sudden, all those mid range and older rigs out there start becoming exponentially more unstable.

7. Conversion can become vastly more complex and bug-ridden.

8. There is a much higher possibility that mesh errors such as broken edges and double-sided faces will escape the builder's attention and affect the mesh negatively.  (In qualitative and technical respects, as well as in-game visual quality and stability.)  To illustrate, if the average model is 97% error free, a mesh of 100k polys is going to have significantly more errors than a mesh of 10k.

9. High poly meshes are almost never a single-unified mesh, which BC prefers for damaging purposes.  Also, a clean and unitary mesh is, without recourse, the mark of a skilled artist.

Now, here is why I am arguing this point so fervently against you limey.  You've got an eye for ships, no doubt, but you could build your ships using a quarter to a half of the polygons that you do and achieve the same visual quality that you strive for.  I know this because I've looked at your meshes.  Wiley sent me his Excelsior a couple of weeks ago, which he was proudly (*and rightly so) touting as high poly.  It's a beautiful piece of work, and many times, the community will get excited if you simply say something is high-poly.  However, Wiley, who is growing and learning very quickly, was able to remove 20,000 polygons from his 40,000 polygon mesh with, and I stress this, zero degradation in the the visual quality of his mesh.  So I see it this way: A mesh that is twice as economical with no visual degradation is a good trade off.  Your Nova mesh, for example, could easily have the same thing done to it, and lose none of it's obvious visual quality.

I'm not saying all this to piss you or anyone off.  I say all this because I've been around here for a while, I do know what I'm doing, and I see it as a responsibility of mine to ensure that new and young modders who come into this community are given some support and education when and where it is appropriate.  The fact is that, despite some of the great things going on in this community, it has never been slower, and it is slowing down.  If we allow ourselves to simply overlook a cornerstone of good mesh production, the overall quality of the products that come from this community will have diminished which has in other communities most certainly been a death knell.

In conclusion, I am not 100% opposed to a 50k mesh.  Honestly, I am not.  However, if we are going to be pushing boundaries in this community (which I am for), we must be sure that we are pushing the boundary for the right reason.  We must be sure that a mesh that's 50k polygons NEEDS every single last one of its triangles, and that we are not making a mesh "high-poly" just for the sake of making it so, or "exciting" the community at large, who in my experience, knows virtually nothing about anything that we do here.

I am not an advocate for low polygon meshes.  I am an advocate for good ones.

[cordanilus]

Here's my thoughts on this...

Poly counts are easier for the computer to handle, but this also depends on the game engine, gfx card and the power of your cpu.  The more you put in, the more each of these has to work.  Especially if they are a moving object.  And I would believe that the BC game engine would have to work that much harder in order for the damaging effect to work properly.  Thus the reason for some very high _vox files, or very low ones. (In terms of Megabytes)  Plus loading times for when you load those objects for the first time.

I would prefer to set a limit for myself and create a model that does not exceed that limit.  Not to challenge anyone else, but to challenge myself.  I am the only person that I need to beat.  If I can create a model with such high detail, yet have a fairly low poly count...then I have done what I set out to do.  I look up to the best, not to find out how they create those masterpieces...but to find out why? when? where? what?  There is a reason for everything, even if you don't agree with it.

As for ultra high poly counts, there is a new geometry card (Like a graphics card) that can help take the load off the geometry engines of your pc.  It's like it's own cpu that specificaly targets polys and their positions, movement, etc.

The poly count of 1 ship may not take up a lot of power.  But remember, there are usually more ships in the game so it all adds up.




Yup, over 800k polys in one game.  Game crashed on the fifth time taking a screenshot.

[Raven Night]

I would like to present this to all takers in this thread, to get opinions.

I like to keep my models around 6000 to 8000 polys, one single object with no errors, 2 sets of 3 2048 maps (diff, spec and glow).

The question I am posing is is there anything in there I should change? Are the maps too big? etc.

Thanks in advance.

[DJ Curtis]

Well, with regards to the maps, I typically use 4 2048x2048 maps.  It seems to have become the standard.  However, I try to include directions on how to resize the textures to a lower level for anyone who's running a lower end rig.  I don't include 1024's or 512 in the Medium and low folders because it quickly ramps up the download size.

It sounds like you're running in about the right areas.  6k-8k for polys is definitely lower end for BC these days, no doubt, so i wouldn't worry a lot about going over too much if you feel the mesh will benefit from it.  That being said, you do a great job of beveling textures and making things pop, so you can get away with a lower poly mesh in areas of detail.

[MarkyD]

@ everyone

Lots of info, makes a good read. Thanks.

[FarShot]

I agree, Moed.  Me being a noob modeler, this discussion really helped.  Just in case anyone thinks of it, don't delete any part of these posts - they are very helpful.

As for the question about poly count, I heartily agree with DJ: if it requires it, do so, but no more.  If a 40k mesh looks as good as a 20k, go with 20k.  As stated above, some of us cannot afford kick-a equipment whenever we want it.  My rigs are as such:
-Laptop with GeForce 9300m GS 256 MB
-Desktop with Integrated ATI Radeon xpress 1350 (I think)

[LS Marie]

More rarely equals better.  Paying more for an item certainly doesn't mean it's better quality, and in mathematics we know, courtesy of Pythagoren, that taking the shortest route is the most efficient. 

Quite frankly, you can't see any differences in game between two similar meshes, but one with double the poly count - there is no point. 

The husband speaks truth.   :arms:

[eclipse74569]

More rarely equals better.? Paying more for an item certainly doesn't mean it's better quality, and in mathematics we know, courtesy of Pythagoren, that taking the shortest route is the most efficient.?

Quite frankly, you can't see any differences in game between two similar meshes, but one with double the poly count - there is no point.?

The husband speaks truth.? ?:arms:

Would that be him in your display pic? ?LOL

Seriously, I side with DJ on this one also. ?I can easily run 2 or 3 CG Sovereign's about 3 of DJ's Galaxy's and a few LC Intrepids with hardly any lag at all, and this is a piece of crap PC . ?They all look great in game. ?It should be fun for all of us in this community . ?That's why when I actually learn how to model properly, my models will be somewhere between 8 to 12k, and not anymore than that.  And I'll probably run 1024x1024 textures with those models.  You can still get a great ammount of detail in those sizes.

[Adonis]

What I have to add on stuff DJ said:

1) Make a strategy of how you're going to build the model as easily as possible

2) Make your model and then optimize it (remove unneeded polies (vert weld))

3) Think of a strategy of how you are going to map the model using less texture maps vs. texture crispness (I usually use a single map on ships below 200m's - my Oberth is a nice example)

4) map the model

Now, a few things I want to point out (no pun intended for anyone, just using recent examples):

1) Use the symmetry modifier both in building the mesh and mapping

2) make the mesh unified (single object with single element)

3) use up as much of the map area, use the tiles also and areas not used on textures should be used for changed structure texturing (Novi Sad's saucer and secondary hull textures are nice examples, also the Akyazi packs textures)

4) I always make an ID map, where I put the areas where the registries and penants, stripes, etc. deflector, impulse engines and shuttlebay doors go. Gives more room for variety (again, the Novi Sad pack is a nice example)

5) when kitbashing a ship, make sure that you build upon the existing mesh, and keep the results unified meshes, textures interchangeable (the Luxor fleet so far has 24 ships using (not counting the extra ship ID maps) a total of 8 textures. Just imagine how much texture resources and disk space I have saved by doing that.

6) the Skinning and Damaging tool is a really underrated script

7) the scripts/ships plugins have some really useful commands in them that can help with performance of a ship

8) NEVER make a ships damage radius in the HP bigger than 1 for a ship that's shorter than 2km's. It's plain stupid, and can result in ships which have all their hull gone and still alive...baaaad idea

9) NEVER make phaser damage radiuses greater than 0.1 and torpedo damage radiuses greater than 0.25, same reason as under 8)

10) Don't make fanboy ships, and fanboy retextures of existing ones, it's boring and a waste of time. We have too many armoured <insert random ship class name here> and similar pointless mods

11) don't reinvent the wheel, do "TNG Mirandas" with Sovereign parts only as a private test or practice, do something constructive for a change

12) don't rush your mods, take your time with them, finetune them, redo them a few times if you're new to modelling and texturing. Do it right, and not slapping some random ship just so you can have a release per week

13) Think your ship through. Count your decks, imagine how those decks would be set up on a ship, where goes what, how big should it be

14) (among the most important rules) learn how star trek ships work, what parts they have, where are they going, what subsystems do what, how much there is of each, which ones are visible on the exterior, etc. A well thought out ship deserves more praise than "a 100 kitbash releases of the week".

15) when you're doing a kitbash, you must remember two things: how the exterior change will affect the interior, and how hard would for an engineering team be to do those changes

16) we today know how to animate textures and how to make transparent textures, etc. use them on your ships (I have a ship in the works which has the interior of the nacelles visible - buzzard collectors and the warp coils)

[limey BSc.]

More rarely equals better.  Paying more for an item certainly doesn't mean it's better quality, and in mathematics we know, courtesy of Pythagoren, that taking the shortest route is the most efficient. 

Quite frankly, you can't see any differences in game between two similar meshes, but one with double the poly count - there is no point. 

The husband speaks truth.   :arms:

As I have said before, I'm against wasting polys. What I really don't like though, is imposing absolute, unbreakable upper limits on poly counts.

[Furyofaseraph]

I come from SFC, and the polylimit on that tends to be a bit harsher than on BC.

When I model, I tried to keep a certain rule of thumb.

Fighters and shuttles shouldn't break 1k
Frigates and Destroyers shouldn't break 4k
Light cruiser < 6k
anything else <8k
Stations <10k

However, I've recently learned that my textures aren't getting the level of detail I want, so I've now doubled each one.

Fighters and Shuttles <2k
FFs and DD <8k
Anything else (I've moved Light Cruisers up) <15k
Stations <20k

I do the same thing with my textures. When I build Textures I keep certain a certain scale.
Fighters, Shuttles, and Frigates = 1024
Destroyers, CLs, and CAs = 2048
DNs and above = 4096.

I imagine, though, when it gets converted to games, the cap will be 2048.

[Legacy]

My God, i'm posting here again..

Well, DJ forced me into this, because the poor guy is arguing alone on a discussion people had here for years.
(Thanks on god points too Adonis).
Also, good quote on Exe's sig DJ ;)

Fact:
BC engine can handle millions of polies if using a high end system, but the engine was not designed to do so.
In fact it was not designed to deal with any object that has more than 10k (stock ingame models had 3k on high lod).
When it's forced to do so, it straves and you'll lose the right ability to damage the ship or the chance to use good textures.

The hard limit people list here (15k) was stabilished by SNS and CG when they did both the galaxy (13k) and sov (15k) and by me when i did the excal 0.9 (12k), before those 3 ships we used to count the bc limits around 9k.

But even with that limit, i still consider 8-10k a very hard limit and i challenge any of you to make a ship with more than that which i cannot duplicate under 10k, with no visible quality loss.

Just to post an example, my intrepid stays confortable under 8,5k and it's smooth and detailed as a good ship must be.

So, to answer the basic question at the start.
IF you cannot keep it under 15k, then you need to go back and refine your modelling skills and learn more. No single trek ship should go over it.
If you can do it under 10k, you're starting to get into the "game modeller" feeling
If you can do it under 8k and it does look good, i can learn to respect you.

LC

[Darkthunder]

Here here

It's always harder to make a ship look good with less polies, than it is using more polies.

[Raven Night]

Legacy

My models might be under 8k and look decent, but I think I have a LONG way to go before you think my work deserves the respect of a modeler as skilled as yourself ;)

10k is the absolute max for me. I wont go over it no matter how big I make the concept...ill delete modeled details and put them in in textures if I have to.

The one thing I have always been good at, even when my modeling skills were poor (wait...they still are pretty poor lol) was greebles in textures. Ive been a concept artist since I was a child, and learned how to busy up an area to make it look mechanical/industrial.

So, simply put, put more into the textures and less into the model. The right texture details can make all the difference.