low... low low poly nascar

sir-knight

hey guys, posting this up because I think I'm stuck or there's no more optimization to make on it, but wanted some input.

Currently the outside and inside faces of the wheels are not using square opacity, as we don't know if mobile devices will be able to draw that much overlapping opacity yet... we're supposed to be doing some tech stress tests at some point.

So with the current wheels, just the outside and inside faces of the wheels are eating 48 triangles.




The car totals 266 triangles, so with opacity mapping, we're talking losing another 32 triangles off of that if we can draw that many animating opacity maps.

It also has an underside, pretty ugly mesh that will probably light like ass, but it will be seen should the car flip. (also why it needs inside facing wheel textures)

so looking at a range of 234-266 triangles for the car. Can anyone else see some optimization that I missed?

ImSlightlyBored

On a model level I suppose the curvature of the back wing thing isnt really needed and you could delete 2 tris off that total, same goes for the rest of the back so thats like 6 tris
not really worth it and I'm assuming they're being textured as a half and then mirrored in most places, in which case I think you've pretty much nailed it, in my view.

Have you tried six/seven faced cylinders instead? You could probably get a bit lower with them but it depends really on your preference. Me, I prefer seven sided. Reckon maybe you can get away with 6 sided but I'm not sure what screen res you are aiming for

thats just my input, probably wrong, but there you go

notman

The need for the bend in the spoiler depends on HOW close he wants it to be liks NASCAR. The bend is pretty apparent on the real cars.... Only problem is, they are using wings now Well, they are moving to wings now. I think several races still include the spoiler.

sir-knight

yeah I saw the wings on the cars on a quick breeze through the channels and thought to myself... hey wait a tick... that's not 50 year old tech... that's new

Well as long as I'm in the right neighborhood, I think two or three extra tris is not going to hurt.

I could probably lower it down even more but it will stop looking like a nascar and just generic box car. Also our devs are contemplating level of detail models, so I also have a model with integrated wheels... think that's below 200 but with the exact same body shape sans wheel wells.

SHEPEIRO

you could delete the inside face of the wheel thus saving a whopping 6 tris per wheel, will look like ass when turned over, but hey you said it would anyway

if you go ahead with the alpha wheels you could save more than 32, if you make the centre cylinder have four sections that will be .....er.....12 tris per wheel saving 64 tris

will look ok at certain angles other will look pantos

sir-knight

actually I can probably delete the outside faces of the inside of the wheelwells... yeah that's right... I just said that to confuse you.

With the wheels never coming off, it might be okay to delete these almost hidden faces.

Ghostscape

Convert the wheels to a 7 sided cylinder, they'll look just as round - odd, low numbers look better than odd, low even numbers. You could alternatively compress the inside of the wheel so it's 4 sided on the inner side since the car won't be flipping often.

greenj2

Second the opinion of those suggesting 7 sided cylinder wheels.

In my opinion, odd-number-sided cylinders always look rounder, because the viewer's eye doesn't immediately recognize the symmetry you find in even-number-sided cylinders. Sometimes you'll need to tweak your textures and UVs a bit more than normal to accommodate this (you shouldn't need to in this case), but if you have the time and effort to spare I think it's worth it.