How to optimize big repetitive object - like rails
polycounter lvl 8
I'm making a model of real world track and I'm having problem with modeling railing. I made one segment of railing, like this:
Model by itself is great and could be bended at several angles to create modular set.
But this track that I'm making is not flat and straight at all and making railing using modular set is just not good enough.
I have tried in Maya doing array of these segments and bending them on curve.
Works perfect, but now I'm stuck with long 50-100k triangle object, which looks great, but preformance wise is probably not good.
I'm using UDK and trying to achive best level od details possible for modern race track model.
Is there any way I could segment this mesh so LOD would work separatly for each segment and I will not have to position 300 different railing models by hand?
Is there any smarter way of doing this whole process?
Model by itself is great and could be bended at several angles to create modular set.
But this track that I'm making is not flat and straight at all and making railing using modular set is just not good enough.
I have tried in Maya doing array of these segments and bending them on curve.
Works perfect, but now I'm stuck with long 50-100k triangle object, which looks great, but preformance wise is probably not good.
I'm using UDK and trying to achive best level od details possible for modern race track model.
Is there any way I could segment this mesh so LOD would work separatly for each segment and I will not have to position 300 different railing models by hand?
Is there any smarter way of doing this whole process?
Replies
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UsingSplineLoftActors.html
The downside to spline loft actors is that they don't come with collision. You'll have to put some blocking volumes around them if you want collision.
You could see if there is a way to deform a mesh along a spline in UDK...I'm unsure if thats possible right out of the box, but a lot of times roads and rails are handled by having them follow a spline. I searched quickly, but couldn't find a definite answer here. I wonder if anybody else has an answer to this?
Edit: sprunghunt came from the future to answer this question already :P
Thanks! I will report how this worked out.
@gsokol Thanks, bigger segments will be needed indeed
it's 1 mesh per spline loft actor.
But if you connect multiple spline loft actors together it stitches them together to make a continuous surface. Think of each actor as being a single control point on a spline.
For example; to make a half circle you'd need 3 spline loft actors. This would make two copies of the assigned mesh.
Some things to note:
-avoid angles over 90°, meshes tend to explode
-avoid up-and-down S splines, mesh bends inside and outside when changing height and angle. When you change angle and height at same time you have to fix "roll" manually in actor settings.
-Be patient, things tend to explode if you don't watch your spline carefully
A lot of this has to do with the "world xDir" value. It can take a bit of fiddling to get the right one. And in many cases it's better to just alter your mesh direction instead of trying to adjust the xDir to fit the mesh.
For instance GTA4 which has a great amount a detail from previous, but if you stare long enough, only areas that the player is intended to go slow or stop in would be more detailed. Otherwise polygons were largely devoted to vehicles and people.