3D Model Showroom

1. These areas can be greatly cut down, just the ends (the cylinder shape with the extrusion on it) you could cut the poly count in these areas by half what they are - easily)

2. The “fans” could be cut in half easily too.

3. Unless the side of this panel has some surface structure as to what i cant see, taking out every other line (edge) could make it smaller all the way round.

4. The inside area wont be seen from the outside, why not make it so its almost a flat panel? - if its seen thru, then it shouldnt make a blind bit of difference i would have thought lol.

18k not a problem!?! Is this ship supposed to only be used by like one person in the whole mod or what?

18k is usually like a HUGE station. 10k or less is for caps, 2k or less for fighters (and those are not conservative numbers at all). Trust me, anything more than 2 or 3 will get you a LOT of complains from people who get lag.

Plus, I don’t believe the 18k is worth it. You can always do a normal ship in less than 2k. The other 16k are added fluff for the most part, a large portion of which can be done with textures.

Of course, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

Yeah, just look for areas that are FLAT. There are a few more areas I see which could be reduced to 1 polygon / 2 faces. Pretty much all the … um gun-like structures. Unless they have curves along them. Look along the sides of the body as well, many of those could be reduced, length-wise, merging polygons. Take into account also that curves in-game in FL’s engine won’t show up as well as in the much better lighting of a 3D program’s rendering. FL’s lighting just is not anywhere as precise as a modeling program, so some curvature can be less complex (engine intakes, radars, etc).

Great looking ship / design either way

Ok…so from what I’m getting is that the ships need to be dubbed down because otherwise lo-end computers will have problems? Or is it that any computer would have problems?

Also, from what I believe, and I may be wrong, but when the texturing is being done, could we not make the cockpit area transparent so you can see it inside when you do a turret view? I mean that’s why it was done like that, otherwise the cockpit would have been left out dropping about 2K to 3K pollies.

And on a final note, I thought Freelancer could render up to 65355 pollies per object, so why would 18K be a huge problem besides what I already mentioned?

The minute you get three of them on screen its gunna be POW bye to FL and hello CTD

If I say your bunker can resist to the power of 1000 nukes, will you REALLY want to test it out by launching 1000 nukes at it?
Your laptop has a 4-hour battery life. Does it really always hit that 4 hours?

Those are arbitrary SOFTWARE limits, given because there is a limitation in how the engine was built in itself. It in no way relates to how the engine would perform on the machines running it. At 18k, every machine will lag. The engine just is too old and the amount of polygons is too large. Plus, in all honesty, I don’t see any reason why this ship has to be SO detailed. I mean, you can easily fake quite a few things with textures and what you can’t fake, you at least don’t need to make silky smooth… And yes, you can make textures transparent.

If you want to have fun, take an asteroid field and ramp up its “fill_dist” to 10k. That might show you what “too many polies” can mean in the end.

18,000 is a lot, but your friend has built that in quad poly, when that imports into milkshape the poly count will double as ms3d only uses tri poly as does FL.

I don’t usually chime in into modelling discussions but feel i’d like to make a point here. For a start 18k is just silly. FL hates anything over 5k and its really not needed unless you want to impress people on some modelling website.

Here’s a link to prove my point,
http://www.3drt.com/3dm/gunships/gunships-showcase.htm
Use the arrow keys in the bottom left to see other models.

The models in that showcase are between 900 - 2000 polys, one multilayered 512x512 texture which kind of illustrates the fact that for FL you can do a helluva lot with textures to mimick detail. Just look at the models Coxxon did for the various BSG mods including mine, those are another good example. Why model airducts when you can use a texture? The argument is valid that if you can model it then do it, but for FL you need to consider the game engine which is why doing details with good textures is the way to go.

After looking at that link, and studying the models a while, I now understand what you meant by use the textures to basically fake pollies. I’ll talk to red about that more and see what we can do, though I want to run a few personal tests first to see just how high polly acts. I tried what you said FriendlyFire and my frame rate dropped to 1/2 frame per min. Was VERY annoying.

Either way, I still say there’s a sufficient way to get higher polly ships to run smoothly, except on space heaters (Griff). I do know from talking to Lancer Sol. that dividing the model into parts (18 max per cmp) allows it to render faster as well as allow you to beat the 65,355 pollies per ship. Like I said, I’m going to run some tests…

65,355 iirc that is the number or total on screen at any point? ive slept since finding out the awnser

Not total on screen, but total pollies per part of an object. At least that’s what I’ve been told to believe from many sources. The total amount of pollies a single .cmp file can hold if devided into all 18 parts is 1,176,390 pollies. But your frame rate will be more shot than a target at a firing range by then.

The max pollies per scene is rendered by the DX level input into game, and what your computer can handle. The resolution of the textures depends on what your computer can handle as well. Really, that’s all I know and it’s not much.

I still don’t get why you want to raise the roof instead of just trimming down the bush…

You will never get proper performance with a high poly ship, no matter how you put it. GPUs can only handle so many polies before they get a brain fart and you know that as well as I do, so I’d really suggest you stop avoiding this problem and fix it instead. Anyone who’ll play your mod will thank you for that.

yep FF is right

lol…I know I’m being difficult, but in the end, isn’t the stubborn way always have the best results? I mean with your analogy, maybe by raising the roof instead I can now have a second story. Extra bedrooms?

And I know what happens when your computer brain farts. I’m getting that a lot trying to play Fallout 3. Every 3 to 5 hours my computer decides to tell me no.

Hmm, I both agree and disagree. All of my experienced modeling friends say that making a model with high polys is dumb, and in part I understand, cause they have shown me otherwise. you can make models high detail and low poly. But that only comes with experience. Much of the detail can be left to the texturing of a model. Many little cuts and grooves wont be noticeable anyway unless the model is big enough for your small fighters to actually fit in them. Just an example though.

Aye i though this threat is called 3D Model Showroom not much polys good or baf.

By the way i use models with more than 12k polys as player battelship and it work very well, no vidlag not even with many players in a event.

You said it: battleship. That isn’t a battleship… And even that is quite high.

And hey, for as long as nobody posts some more model stuff, why not let the thread live its life?

The Coalition Cruiser from the FL Intro movie with an alternative texture:

YAY! We are back on topic now. ;D

Made by my buddy Herman.

GC Heavy Scout

Nice, I love that ship forsaken! The bottom of it reminds me of a trainer… which now that I think about it, suits a scout =D