Polywaste

Joao Sapiro

hey, there was a guy in another board that used some uber polywaste in a gun model , claiming it was next gen, so he could waste the polygons, and they barely added to the silhouette ( something like 30 sided cilinder etc ) so i made a small image showing detail balance dunno if it will help anyone or you can share your polywaste control advice etc...

Joseph Silverman

I see that a lot. Especially weapons modelers, thinking that just because they have a fairly high poly cap they can afford to always use 20 sided objects. Nice example, anyway.

tremulant

Nice johny, I've seen this abused also. And people seem to keep forgeting that intersecting can save soo much.

Might wanna change "spended" to spent.

EarthQuake

As long as you keep in mind that too much intersections can start to cost you valuable UV space that is wasted on unseen parts of your mesh.

Rick Stirling

I'm with you here. The smoothing on faces means that you don't notice the non roundness except at the edges. For a gun barrel, 12-16 is plenty.

Too many people you 'But it's for next gen!" as an excuse, and need a slap.

That being said, polycounts don't really matter as much for static objects like that - add a weight mesh into the equation though and you need to store weights for every one of those verts. Then I'd get my mighty sword of Dobber out and do soome smiting.

Silva_Spoon

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The smoothing on faces means that you don't notice the non roundness except at the edges.


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That isnt entirely true. You will also notice non-roundedness on surfaces where there is something in the texture that wraps around the cylinder perpendicularly. For example a leg with a strap across it. If you dont have plently of sides on the leg as soon as the knee is raised the illusion the normal map gives is lost and the hard edges of the low poly leg are revealed. This is one of my art director's pet peaves.

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Too many people use 'But it's for next gen!" as an excuse, and need a slap.


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Amen to that!

Slum

One thing I really hate when it comes to poly wasting is when people make guns for FPS games, but don't delete unseen faces.

The worst is when the guy animating the guns is also modelling them. He knows exactly what parts will be seen, but still keeps them in. wtf! O_O I hate when they use a 20 sided cylinder for the barrel, then actually have it hollowed out 'in case' it gets seen from the front. Even if you do see it from the front (reloading or something) it would only be visible for maybe a couple frames. Nothing a texture couldn't handle. yargh!