Environment Modeling Inquiree

Kovac

Hey all,
While trying to make my foot in the door of the gaming industry I've received an env art test that is due next week. I want to get the ball rolling on this but one thing is holding in the back of my mind. I see many environments where any tubes or anything going into floors/ceilings have the ceiling mesh aroud it cut into it. Since I always try to optimize things to their fullest, I'm used to just having the pipe go into the ceiling and the ceiling being a plane. Hopefully this clicks with what I'm talking about (it might be poorely worded), and if not I'll make a quick comparison.

Basically I'm just curious on why people have things cut in as opposed to running through it. I have read about it being optimal for casting shadows, but when you have a cylinder cut into a plane, it'll have a bunch of triangles going into the corners and I'm not sure how this helps.

Thanks in advance guys!

ScoobyDoofus

Kovac: I think it has to do with how rendering engines calculate shadows.

Your method of simply "clipping" one object into another is much more efficient in terms of your triangle count, however it may produce some unwanted visual artifacts occasionally.
I also usually just clip my geometry into eachother. inaccuracies in shadow calculations usually dont look THAT bad, not bad enough to warrent spending an additional 5-10-20 or more polys per intersection.

FunkaDelicDass

It's common practice if your are going to use vertex lighting in your scene. Having the extra verts around the pipe where it hits the ceiling allows for smoother vertex lighting, since there's more vertices to be lit. That's also why you'll see some walls divided up into a bunch of smaller quads, even though the extra geometry isn't being used for extra detail. It's there to allow more detailed vertex lighting.

Kovac

That's what I figured, thanks guys. Do you think that I should go this route on my art test (the example file they sent me had it done this way)? I'm trying to look as professional as possible and didn't know for sure if having it clip through was the 'noob' way of doing it. Thanks again!

FunkaDelicDass

If they are asking you to light the scene, I would do everything within their constraints to make the lighting look good.

Kovac

They asked for no lighting at all, so I'm trying to build it the cut way for the most obvious parts (in case they want it lit as a next step or test it themselves in their engine). Thanks.

MoP

I think that as long as you demonstrate your artistic skill without going overboard on unnecessary detail (huge textures/unseen polys), the company will see you have the correct skillset, and any specific engine issues they have with their own games, you would learn on the job.

That is, unless they specifically stated certain constraints, but it sounds like they didn't, so you should be ok.

Kovac

Thanks MoP
They sent me an example model with the test and it did it int the cut into and not clip through method so I'm doing that on the major detals but things that aren't as obvious I'm going to just avoid it.

Lee3dee

good luck on your art test

Kevin Albers

It's a good idea to get into the habit of making art that will have as few technical problems as possible. I recommend cutting those objects rather than leaving them clipping. It's better for lighting, shadows, and can prevent ugly texture flickering/z-fighting.