[trex238]

@ComradeJ Fair enough, but as Generals does age I believe people should push the the poly count limit, maybe just a bit slower that I first stated. BTW that's the same set up I have

Too bad about the thread though :cry: , not to mention the enormous amount of other info that got lost.

[Pestilence]

luckily i offline ssaved some of those really good trheads that i liked, also unlucky for other tho that i didnt get to offlining some of the threads that did get lost. otherwise i would upload them.

I think in another six months there will be a lot of us with the new GF 6800 and ATI R420 generations cards and then we can really up the poly. right now i have an Athlon 64 3200+ and a GF 5900 ultra, it it runs fine at 1600x1200 with all the wizbang turn on, except for the unavoidable random pause, but if i play at 1024x768, it runs tremendously faster. but i prefer the detail of 1600x1200.

[SquireJamesTGW]

Coming from a game called ST Armada, poly counts are no stranger to me. The original Armada models had poly counts of about 150-300, but recently a 6000 poly ship was put in game with minimal slowdown, but even i agree thats excessive, 2k is usually the limit for moving units.

As for the TGW models, the highest is the Handley-Page 0/400 and thats 1498 polys approx. I have optimised as much as possible but all those structs make the difference. Besides im limiting the Heavy Bombers to either 4 or 8 per side, so they won't be used a huge amount. Most of the mechanised units in TGW will be like the Overlord in Generals, the speahead of your attack not the bulk, so poly counts of 900 for the main tanks up to 1400 for the rarer units like the A7V should be acceptable, especially in an engine like SAGE.

Anyways have have some useful tips for vehicles

1) Gun barrels should not need to be more than 8 sided for large guns (cannons etc) and 3 - 6 sided for small guns (MGs) and certainly only a single stack

2) Similar to above, most wheels are much more visibly rounded than barrels, and so may be between 6 - 8 or for extreme cases 12. For heavily spoked wheels, alpha maps may be the way to go.

3)Usually, small detail like triggers. breeches and barrel braces go unoticed, so try to omit them.

You probably thinking "well thats obvious" and to a Veteran it is, but i wish someone had told me these kind of simple things back when i first started modelling. Besides, every little helps

Squire James

[bdmboy1]

Gettin my start at Imperial Assault has mad me aware of a few things.

1 Spheres and cylinder/tubes dont need more than 8 sides to look good. Even when making factory smokestacks, 5 sides looks really good

2 Vertexs count. The more vertexs, the more polys. Try to optimize your buidings by connecting/welding vertexs

3 ZH doesnt soom in that much. Even lower poly models looks good on the engine.

4 A great skin can make a diffrence. For example for the great war i made a church. All i had to do was make a few boxes, and have a skin put on it. When SquireJames put the skin on the building looks great

[DarkSlayer]

You all think wrong about polycount ...

The question is not how much the engine is capable of, but who your target audience is. Who do you want to be able to play your games?
Those with GF6800 Super Quadro Insane v2008 powered by MegaRender Technology???? or a little less?

Anyway... making a good looking unit with very little poly is skills and art

[juLLe]

for example:
my mig23 here has only 230 polys and i think it looks good:

if there is an skin on it you will never see if something is round or not round.
the textures must bring the detail!! not many polys.

[trex238]

Yes! How could I forget that part!? Good skins make a nice low poly model into an awesome unit!

[EvilViking]

C'mon, somebody sticky this!

[SquireJamesTGW]

I concur with the texturing, but i have this to add. If the model is flawed, then no amount of textures and mapping will fix it. But a good model can be trashed by a bad texture. So they kinda go hand in hand

[Flyby]

Originally Posted by trex238

For aircraft it's a different story. Unwelded vertices still cause more calculation but more noticeably they can cause the "evil shadow bleed through" problem, but there's a catch. If you do this to a poly & make it 2-sided* then you create another shadow bleed through problem. In this case you weld what you can or just don't worry (a few here & there isn't the problem in aircraft like it is in infantry)

I always weld my planes...
Shadow bleeding are ALWAYS due to modelling errors:

-coplanar faces : causes surface shimmering and in some occasions shadow leaks

- Internal vertical faces: when using the extrusion sub-modelling technique you always have the original face left. If you don't delete it, you're 100*% sure to get bleeding.

- flipped faces

- non closed surfaces at the top of the model: the shadow projection goes top bottom. If for some reason there is no top face, but only a bottom one, you're probably going to have shadow problems.