Well, I figured I'd post this looking for a bit of advice due to the fact that I'm rather new to modelling etc.
I've been working with several high-poly models (also pretty big texture sizes) and was wondering what kind of software (aside from my artistic skills) would be considered 'good' to reduce the polycount while maintaining a workable mesh shape because the tools that come with Softimage XSI seem to remove far too many polys and leave gaping holes in my models as soon as I begin to reduce the polycount I have capship models at 15000 polys and ran a stress test or 5 and it seems I can't have too many of the ships in a system without a lot of lag...I have crossfired radeon HD 6970s with a intel i7 quad core 3.06 Ghz and 12GB ( I know 2GB limit for SOASE) Ram at 1600Mhtz and I've ran my test maxed out graphics in Rebellion 0.96...so any advice on a polycount reducer? is Topogun any good? or blender? Thanks, and I've attached 1 screenie of my 15k Capships
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198037266565/screenshot/560942745914730504?tab=public
Not my area of expertise but this will bump the topic and just wanted to say really nice model.
From my own experience, counts gets reduced best by gnashing your teeth and screaming, "WHYYYY!?" at the heavens when you finally start cutting your models down.
lol, yeah thanks (disclaimer: the model is the property of CCP...I 'just' imported it into SOASE....which I found difficult) It seems that Topogun can import .objs as ref files and you can retopograph them to lower the poly count...but I think this would totally destroy the UV map/ Tangents? anyone have any ideas? or corrections?
woops, double post:(
You might look here to get started and might find this useful too. Lots of links on both.
I thought that model looked familiar.
If the reduce polygon tool in Softimage leaves gaping holes in your mesh, that's probably because you have unconnected edges/duplicate vertices.
That said, the tool is actually pretty good - my only complaint is that it doesn't leave smooth edgeloops, but since SoaSE ships aren't animated, that's not much of a problem.
If you need more flexibility as to which areas of the model will get reduced and which will not, use a weightmap, just remember to attach it to the model BEFORE you apply the polygon reduction tool.
Oh, and you also get much cleaner results if you tick the "Preserve Quad Lines" option - provided your original model is composed of quads, not tris. Since you're using extracted models from EvE, my guess is that's not the case.
And finally - Moros is a curvy ship. There's a reason it is high poly. Curves need a lot of polygons. So there's a limit as to what you can do, regardless of the technique and software you end up using. It's a game model for a MMO featuring sometimes thousands of ships on screen, and as such you can bet the CCP developers made sure it is as optimized as it can be. 15000 polys sounds about right for that model.
Agreed. We use an about 12k model for the Sharlin and I've had zero problems having more than 10 on screen at once. I've got a Radeon 5870 and a MacPro 6C 3.33GHz with 8GB of RAM. So if you did not have many many many more of them at your screen at once it might not have todo with your polycount after all. Check your tangents, check the model for errors and such.
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