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

johnwhelan · May 4, 2012

norfolksouthern37 said:
This might be relevant, but who would set the mean standard to follow? i certainly agree that a 10,000 polygon warehouse is better than a 10,000 polygon streetlamp in that regard, but there would have to be some kind of standard by which to say "that is too much". i think that comes down to asset creator education more than anything. if they were doing things the correct way, there would be no reason to worry about this.

There might be an equivalent to load on the graphics engine, but there are never any more polygons than the 'real' ones like you are calling them. even giving people this idea is a mistake far as i am concerned.

Still shouldn't be a 'rule of thumb'. i think it was only expressed that way so you would know what it meant. again, i think this is a bad idea. i cannot think of an instance in all my years of creating 3d art for a number of softwares where one would be able to actually be specific about this number of so called 'equivalents' and where they wouldn't vary widely. also, to try and add this arbitrary number is just going half way - i.e. not taking into account several other things that could be producing overhead. the only real way to know any useful information about a model without making things up such as equivalents is something like

Polygon count:
Number of materials:
Number of texture maps:

To add anything else to that that isnt specifically known is a waste of screen space to be honest. also a lot of that information is already available in CMP.

I'm using the term used by WindWalkr to describe the overheads involved in a simplified manner and it is useful in deciding whether or not to create an lod or even stick more than one house in the same mesh. I seem to recall Paul Hobbs mentioning this could be done to lower the impact of built up areas many many years ago but until WindWalkr's values where made available it was difficult to know just what sort of advantage we were talking about.

Cheerio John

norfolksouthern37 · May 5, 2012

johnwhelan said:
I'm using the term used by WindWalkr to describe the overheads involved in a simplified manner and it is useful in deciding whether or not to create an lod or even stick more than one house in the same mesh. I seem to recall Paul Hobbs mentioning this could be done to lower the impact of built up areas many many years ago but until WindWalkr's values where made available it was difficult to know just what sort of advantage we were talking about.

Cheerio John

Yes i know, you have said this over and over like a skipping record. what i am saying here is that it adds no physical polygons to the mesh and that seems to be what some want to see as the outcome. this was an approximate meter that was given as a general idea at some point. i think to put it in that status, as a general rule to follow, would be misleading and useless. it is not and cannot possibly be an exact measure of performance or resource use. the values would simply not work for all assets.

whitepass · May 5, 2012

1. all scenery, buildable, industry and traincar assets with more than 200 polys must have lod.

That's way to low, more like 500-900.

johnwhelan · May 5, 2012

norfolksouthern37 said:
Yes i know, you have said this over and over like a skipping record. what i am saying here is that it adds no physical polygons to the mesh and that seems to be what some want to see as the outcome. this was an approximate meter that was given as a general idea at some point. i think to put it in that status, as a general rule to follow, would be misleading and useless. it is not and cannot possibly be an exact measure of performance or resource use. the values would simply not work for all assets.

However currently it is the best available information. I agree it may not be exact and may vary according to the hardware platform, operating system, monitor screen size, the version of Trainz being used, the memory available, the type of hard disk etc. The impact may not even be measurable on screen depending on what other assets are in the screen shot.

I think WindWalkr has expressed a view it would be nice to have a tool that took many other things into account when assessing assets.

The hypothesis model is one that has been used in science for many years, you use one until a better one arrives.

Cheerio John

nikos1 · May 5, 2012

whitepass said:
That's way to low, more like 500-900.

900 polys for a locomotive is near impossible. seems like a average is around 25,000 to 30,000 polys.

norfolksouthern37 · May 5, 2012

i think if LoD doesnt remove more than 1000 polygons from the last detail level then it might actually be detrimental to performance - i.e. wasting cycles on loading another model when it wont really do any good to do so. at least that how i usually try to keep them. i have never run into that problem on a locomotive though.

Dinorius_Redundicus · May 6, 2012

It would be simpler and less ambiguous to list how many poly's, materials and filesize of the textures. CM tries to do that, but only on one asset at a time, and I notice, not on all assets. It would be far more useful if the information could be listed in columns just like other properties such as username, kuid number, etc so we could sort them in order of poly's or textures. CM also seems to 'double count' the meshes and textures if there is LOD which is misleading for rating an asset.

Paulsw2 · May 8, 2012

norfolksouthern37 said:
i think if LoD doesnt remove more than 1000 polygons from the last detail level then it might actually be detrimental to performance - i.e. wasting cycles on loading another model when it wont really do any good to do so. at least that how i usually try to keep them. i have never run into that problem on a locomotive though.

That's interesting as I've just seen a new asset on the DLS who's LOD1 mesh was 20,000 polys and LOD2 was 19,500. The unwary downloader wouldn't know any of this unless they used AssetX to check. (Note, the asset in question is a small one storey stone building).

I think that N3V really should require asset creators to state the number of polys in the asset description as part of the upload process.

Paul

martinvk · May 8, 2012

One of the risks of having an open creation environment is that everyone can contribute, no matter how well they know and understand the process. It results in both excellent and not so excellent objects being offered to anyone who wants them. Hopefully those first clumsy attempts will be corrected in future updates. The obsoleting system makes it easy for a creator to replace their lessor objects with better versions. Too bad more people don't use it.

Despite the problems I still think it is better to have more variety and choice. If contributions were ever restricted to the few experts, the quality might soar but at the expense of the overall community. The vast mjority of the members would be reduced to passive consumers rather than active participants.

Back on topic. Sure the LOD mentioned is not very useful but that can be corrected. A gentile nudge and perhaps a hint or two on how to make a major reduction in the specific object would go a long way to making both the creator better at producing content and increasing the enjoyment of the object's users. Plus there is the possibility of getting even more and better content from that creator in the future.

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

johnwhelan

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norfolksouthern37

what's a normal map?

whitepass

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johnwhelan

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nikos1

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norfolksouthern37

what's a normal map?

Dinorius_Redundicus

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Paulsw2

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martinvk

since 10 Aug 2002

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