Why use High Poly - Sketch Up ... instead of learnig GMax & Blender

Again the question still remains why us people who use sketchup must cater to people with problems with higher poly content? If i made a creation in 3dsmax and it had a massive amount of polys say 125,000+. and I put it in trainz, used the object and released it, who are you to say what I should do? If I want to use sketchup to make an object with 500,000 polys and release it again who are you to say anything?

I make and convert things for MY use primarily, me releasing what I have done to other people is secondary. If the people do not what I give them then they can either not use it, delete it, or simply not download it in the first place. If I want to create a scene with a few million polys as I have already come close to doing then release the route with that scene, then who cares? That is my right. If your computer cannot cope with it, simple, edit the route to reduce the polys yourself to a level your computer can handle, or suffer through the slide show till you reach a better area, or delete the route from your computer....

Back when I had an old ancient computer I would hate to use routes with super high detailed cityscapes etc..but that wasn't the route creators fault! Or the creators of the individual assets! It was MY FAULT...why do you ask? Because I was the one who did not have an up to date computer that could handle the mass load. I can have parking lots full of my ford vehicles as well as massive skyscrapers all around the parking lot and still pull well over 60fps..while other people will struggle to get 10fps. That is not my problem, I built the content for ME not the people, ME.

Just a comment to those who feel the higher poly counts and number of textures are not a problem.

If you look at the wiki for creating content there are guidelines in there creating content that won't impact the games engine unduly. These apply to all content creation software. Sketch up works fine on a six sided cube or simple house, it is just as efficient as Blender or 3DS or GMAX. It's when you add bits that it starts to get very heavy on the polys.

Basically I think Paul Hobbs has commented that 100,000 polys should not be a problem with lod. However I have yet to see a reasonable way of creating the lods in Sketch up. The number of texture files also impacts performance and from what I've seen with Sketch up it is not simple to have a single texture file.

If you know what you are doing then often you can add in a single sketch up model without impacting frame rates too much but most users don't understand enough about scenery objects to understand the impact on performance of a number of these and to them Trainz has awful frame rates. This is especially true for lap top users with limited machine resources and to me that is an issue.

Cheerio John

BLACKWATCH said:

All you have to do is give the alternative a bit of consideration & read the bloody post ...

Click to expand...

I read the whole bloody post...

I'm thinking of doing a video tutorial about how to get a model from Sketchup into Blender, then another on how to texture it and add attachments, and a final one on exporting it.

Click to expand...

Also, I will show that some of the many parts created by Sketchup can, in Blender, be deleted or joined with another part, so the poly count can be reduced.

Click to expand...

Perhaps I'm losing some subtle meaning because English is not my native language, but this - in my opinion - just confirms that Sketchup meshes need editing in Blender to make efficient Trainz content (and no, my PC is not a Pentium II ).

It is easy to get SketchUp into Blender. Get one of the DXF plugins and they go right in:



Nothing wrong with creating in Sketchup and properly texturing in Blender.

I make things in Pro-E, a cad program and "Trainz" them in Blender:



I believe the objection to SketchUp is the misuse of a tool.

Harold

BobCass said:

john: I tell you what..If you can give me some basic information, I might be tempted..Now I must tell you that I am not computer literate..

Click to expand...

I wonder if we can reuse some one else's bogey ie that will save having to create an animated wheel set, anyone any suggestions?

Perhaps KUID2: 262137:90400:1

Thanks John

Gandalf0444 said:

Again the question still remains why us people who use sketchup must cater to people with problems with higher poly content? If i made a creation in 3dsmax and it had a massive amount of polys say 125,000+. and I put it in trainz, used the object and released it, who are you to say what I should do? If I want to use sketchup to make an object with 500,000 polys and release it again who are you to say anything?

Click to expand...

The question has already been answered but I'll try once again: the problem is that route builders will use Sketchup hi poly models in their routes and when somebody downloads the route with the dependencies they'll then start wondering Trainz runs so badly on their machine. The next thing they'll probably do is start yet another thread demanding that N3V invest thousands of man hours developing a new game engine - which would be completely unnecessary if people would stick to the guidelines.


Paul

I guess what it all comes down to is that some people don't care if they inflict problems on innocent users. The new user who doesn't understand why Trainz is a slide show after loading a poly bloated object will reasonable conclude that Trainz is not worth the effort and go look for something else.

So go ahead, make million poly objects but please don't pollute the DSL with them. Notice I said nothing about what program was used to create them. If someone knows how to make a poly efficient object with Sketchup, more power to them.

paulhobbs said:

- which would be completely unnecessary if people would stick to the guidelines. Paul

Click to expand...

Point taken, but the COC is far easier to access than the Wiki guidelines, and it would seem that few abide by those rules either! One can wish, I suppose!

Think this applies to this thread.

Gandalf0444 said:

....I built the content for ME not the people, ME.

Click to expand...

In which case, why bother uploading it? Like you, I have no problem with creators uploading assets with thousands, even millions, of polys. But I do have a problem when they don't explain that their creation is a 'high fat' asset that's likely to cause anything other than a super-computer a severe bout of indigestion. Why are creators so coy about admitting the poly content of their assets?

In my other thread on this subject - regarding gas lamps with 30,000 polys - I've suggested a cap on poly size for certain categories of assets or a mandatory statement about poly size as part of the upload process before assets are accepted for the DLS.

"Buyer beware" by all means, but the 'buyer' deserves to be informed about what he's downloading and currently creators are not being candid about polys. It's time N3V required some honesty about this.

Paul

Well I have the policy that regardless of what it says in the licence of any routes I download, if there
are any items in the route that are too poly heavy for what they are (like those lamposts), I will
delete & replace with alternatives, so if my screenshots of a route look slightly different to the norm, that
will be why. At the end of the day, I have the last say at what sits on my hard drives, not anyone else.

BLACKWATCH said:

Well I have the policy that regardless of what it says in the licence of any routes I download, if there
are any items in the route that are too poly heavy for what they are (like those lamposts), I will
delete & replace with alternatives, so if my screenshots of a route look slightly different to the norm, that
will be why. At the end of the day, I have the last say at what sits on my hard drives, not anyone else.

Click to expand...

Yes but how many users know enough to be able to identify these problem assets and find replacements?

Cheerio John

It's all very well people with high spec pc's using very high poly asstes, but N3V does give minimum specs the game should run on. So what will happen if they implement the same solution they did for shadows that exceed the poly count recomendations........high poly boxes everywhere?

Chris.

paulhobbs said:

The question has already been answered but I'll try once again: the problem is that route builders will use Sketchup hi poly models in their routes and when somebody downloads the route with the dependencies they'll then start wondering Trainz runs so badly on their machine. The next thing they'll probably do is start yet another thread demanding that N3V invest thousands of man hours developing a new game engine - which would be completely unnecessary if people would stick to the guidelines.


Paul

Click to expand...

Well Auran does need to get with the program and start developing a newer game engine. But then again the people who download the content also need to take some liability as to why the game is running like crap. Perhaps it could be that the hardware they are using should not be running trainz? Or that in the case of TS12 the specs that Auran said the game could be used on are 100% bogus...

Paulsw2 said:

In which case, why bother uploading it? Like you, I have no problem with creators uploading assets with thousands, even millions, of polys. But I do have a problem when they don't explain that their creation is a 'high fat' asset that's likely to cause anything other than a super-computer a severe bout of indigestion. Why are creators so coy about admitting the poly content of their assets?

In my other thread on this subject - regarding gas lamps with 30,000 polys - I've suggested a cap on poly size for certain categories of assets or a mandatory statement about poly size as part of the upload process before assets are accepted for the DLS.

"Buyer beware" by all means, but the 'buyer' deserves to be informed about what he's downloading and currently creators are not being candid about polys. It's time N3V required some honesty about this.

Paul

Click to expand...

Why release it? Because it is my right to. It is also my right to put the poly count in the description if I so choose. But most people who know me and talk to me on a regular basis regarding trainz know, that goes without saying that the stuff I use, release and make are very highly detailed or high poly so it goes without saying when they download a building or a car, or even a fully fledged route that it may suffer on your computer.

amigacooke said:

In the final analysis. it's N3V's DLS, game engine and franchise. If they think high polygon inefficient content is a problem, presumably they'll do something about it. Until that point pretty much anything goes.

Click to expand...

They probably should in a perfect world and as long as it remains a potential action. If they every actually did something about the high poly issue, the whew and cry would make this thread seem positively tame.

This is a perfect opportunity for PEV to release a "Poly Whacker" program. I'm thinking something that could "red flag" poly rich assets and allow the user to decide their fate.

Ok so i admit i use sketchup but at least i credit the orignal creator and i don't consider myself as a content creator.

Oh thanks Ed.. Bit busy with AssetX at the moment.

What you suggest is possible, but it would be like any of the poly collapse gadgets in the 3D modeller programs. They are not very reliable and the results turn to custard very quickly as you play with the settings.

I really don't want to go there..

It would be nice if we could bury an ID in meshes to identify which exporter they come from but unfortunately there's no place to put such info.

PEV said:

Oh thanks Ed.. Bit busy with AssetX at the moment.

Click to expand...

I wasn't really trying to add more to your plate Peter! Besides, I wasn't suggesting a program to "get rid of polys", only one that could analyze the Trainz database and identify which kuids were abnormally heavy in polycount.