Modelling the World's Biggest Satellite. SUGGESTIONS Please. Lots of questions

Shadow2Matrix

Hey Guys I am modelling the Arecibo, Puerto Rico Observatory. It is the area where I was born and has peaked my interest for a game. Now I have a few questions, I was wondering how to properly approach this and ask before I finish so I can make necessary corrections as I go. I am going to model everything. It is all quaded and have detached some parts so that I may keep low and clean topology. I was wondering if this would be game ready for the estimated polys or is it too much. Tower one will prob. be about 800, then duplicated twice. so were looking at maybe 2400 and thats excluding the dish and and the scope receiver and walkways. This will be a major role in game so Im estimating a total of 5000 polys for everything, is that too much? I was thinking about baking some wire into a plane to minimize but im trading quality for quantity, What would you guys suggest technical wise and some other approaches be better for final product? and is it looking okay so far?

Another is I want to minimize the use of textures in UDK. So I can UVW Unwrap some pieces but it would be very time consuming and may cause lots of visible seams. I can also UVW map some stuff but it would be added texture space in the content browser but it would look cleaner and easier to do. Please add suggestions and approaches. I appreciate you guys. Thanks!!

MikeF

There are rarely Hard set rules for polycount so keep in mind the following criteria:
-target platform (Mobile, desktop)
-what is the genre? (A first person shooter will require a lot more detail compared to a RTS)
-what else will be visible on screen (some weapons, characters etc...)

Unless you're targeting mobile then you need to concern yourself less of tri count and more so of drawcalls. Hope that helps a bit!

Shadow2Matrix

Thanks Mike,

Every little thing helps.
Well I have a 3rdPersonShooter Demo in Mind I want to do in UDK. (Deff Desktop) I want it to look really clean and up to current generation standards. So I wasn't to sure if I should go crazy with detail or simplify. On the level there will be alot of foliage plus character and weapon. Will have a few buildings but very minimal and will be targeting a bit of sci fi. So electrical high tech fence and props of that nature. Its secluded so mainly wilderness.

iniside

With objects of that scale, you should throw as many polygons as you need in the first place, to make it look good.

Tri counts are no longer an issue. Textures/lighting/materials will bottleneck far quicker than to many triangles on scene.

Shadow2Matrix

Hey Iniside,

Well to be honest I've been focusing lately on quads and never really explored the world of tri's too much. I hear it looks cleaner and more efficient on quads especially if you are using smoothing groups but do you know if the engine when it automatically breaks will keep the estimated tri count the same as said in max or will I have to do it manually to get better results? Then again, a square is two tri's so that kind of answers my own questions. lol sorry.

iniside

Well, in game everything will get triangulated. That's why in gamedev when people say poly they mean triangle.

Modeling in quads is really only relevelant if you are doing sub-div modeling or preparing meshes for Zbrush with no intention of using Dynamesh.

Another thing to bear in mind, that usually the tri count is not relevelant at all. Vertices count is what really matters.

Noors

Goldeneye Cradle ?
Might be of some interest :
http://www.moddb.com/mods/goldeneye-source/images/cradle3#imagebox

Shadow2Matrix

Thank You Noors I've been looking into them and most of them are pretty good representations of the satellite but are tweaked to help to what they need. As should I but What I am concerned about it all the technical stuff. How much can be too much. Right now here is my progress and im almost at 2,000 poly's for one tower. Now that x2 is 6k polys idk if thats too much or acceptable let alone should I keep it all under maybe two to three UVW maps or should I unwrap the structure?? Also is it looking good so far guys? I have little reference to work with. Mainly using google satellite. Heres the WIP

Noors

From what i see you're out of proportions aldready. The tower is thiner, the cables should get closer from each other at the top.
Now you poly count is fine, level of detail seems decent for a fps view.
You might want to make a quick mockup of everything tho (blocking), before going into details, to check proportions, be sure everything work together..
You'll need tiling textures to keep a fairly high texture resolution. Everything that doesn't tile (details, whatever) could stand on the same map. For instance, that lower block could be on its own map, and the tower used a tiled map, or 2 blended together with vertex alpha...Lots of possibilities. You might want to take a look at udk tutorials all over the web, cause really it's a vast subject.

ZacD

2,000 poly for a tower is more than fine. The most important thing is not wasting polygons, if they are all important, don't worry about them. 20,000 polys for a character is normal for this generation, so 20,000 polys for an important environment piece can be acceptable.

Shadow2Matrix

Thanks ZacD thats the type of info I was interested in mainly knowing! that helps alot. Now my next question is how many polys if anyone knows should a Scene have in total for an average low end PC to run things smoothly? I do realize engine and scripts also play a role but I just need a median to go by.

Shadow2Matrix

Noors, than you for pointing out proportions. I do have everything to scale length wise however and set to feet in Generic Units. I fixed the tower and spread the cables. The only things is some references are way to far or blurry to get the replicated detail so I will have to improvise. Its not an exact replica so I will have to make it my own.

ZacD

The Xbox 360 came out in 2005, if that can push 20,000 poly characters, a low end computer from the last few years can as well, as long as it has some sort of graphics card.

Shadow2Matrix

ZacD,

Yeah I saw a model ripped from halo 4 of master chief today pushing exactly 20k polys. I mean a scene in general including characters, assets, foliage, etc. what would the average poly count be in total be? if known..

ZacD

I think the demo scenes for UDK have about 250,000 tris. But they are small scenes and a bit old. I wouldn't be surprised if many games are pushing a few million tris at once.

Polycount isn't your biggest concern, draw calls are much bigger of a performance concern.