Md2 versus b3d on older machines?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Md2 versus b3d on older machines?
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| Could someone let me know the advantages of an md2 model over a b3d model on an old machine. For instance - is one of them easier for an old machine to render many of than a b3d model. |
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| Yes. Much. B3d's are animated "on-the-fly". In other words, all the vertices are moved according to the bones in real time, and it's pretty slow in software. MD2's on the other hand are precalculated. All the vertex positions each frame are calculated and stored in the file. It's MUCH faster to use MD2's. However, there are a lot of drawbacks to the MD2 also. Lighting doesn't affect MD2's as it should. They suffer from wobbling vertices. They work best for low, low poly models ( under 1,000 ideally. ) To sum up in a little sound bite, if you want a lot of sub-1000 poly characters on screen, and you won't see them up close often, MD2 is a solid choice. If you are going to see characters close up, and/or the polycount is higher, you'd probably best stick with b3d. |
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| Thanks, it sounds like md2 models are more likely to be useful to me currently. |
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| Of course you have to be careful with mesh-morph systems, as they can eat up lots of memory if you have a lot of animations or different model types. Is it possible to make mesh-morph animations with B3D models, rather than boned? If so, would that be as fast as MD2 models |
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| If B3Ds supported mesh morphing they wouldn't offer a huge advantage over MD2s (the lighting issue with MD2s is a consequence of not recalculating normals every time you deform the mesh -- solve it for B3Ds and you might as well solve it for MD2s). MD2s aren't as bad as folks make out. If the worst thing you have to worry about your game is related to using MD2s then you're WAAAAY ahead of most Blitz3D games. In the meantime, there are a bazillion ways to create MD2s from almost any decent 3D tool you can think of, whereas producing nicely animated B3Ds requires highly specific workflows. |
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| for anything of reasonable polycount I wouldn't touch md2s with a bargepole. I tried them a while ago and the vertices wobble around hideously. You can't go close in at all, it was horrendous - yuk ik ack ewwww. I now use .b3d which for me is soooo much better. |
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| MD2's look rubbish in Blitz3D with piss poor lighting and no special features such as normals, etc... |
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| Traci: by "reasonable" polycount I assume you mean "reasonably high" polycount ;) Edit: if you look at Traci's worklog: http://blitzbasic.com/logs/userlog.php?user=337&log=328 you'll see what kind of models she's talking about. These are way beyond the quality of what most of us are working with :) If B3Ds did support mesh deformation with higher precision vertex coordinates then you could have the convenience of MD2 without the vertex wobble. As for recalculating vertex normals, that's not really an intrinsic limitation of MD2 (all the vertex normals of a skeletally deformed mesh need to be recaclulated too); there's no particular reason why the engine can't recalculate vertex normals for MD2s (or simply interpolate them). But yes, as it currently stands they aren't lit properly |
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| Wow... I didn't know the type of model actually affects a game in real time. I thought the 3D file was just a bunch of coordinates for vertexes. I was thinking Blitz uses functions like AddVertex to make the models and just uses the files as intructions. |
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| Didn't they update the direct x format (.x) to support bones? |
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| Possibly, however Blitz didn't updae its support of .x for bones... DeadMoap - Well, yes, without animation they are virtually the same, but md2 and b3d have different animation methods (thus the seperated command set), md2 being better for speed, b3d being better for compactness (doesn't store individual vertex transformations), and versitility (you can access bones and affect the animation). |
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| I have checked also md2 deforms models when 2k tris or so...slightly. But maybe that could be my art software... an md2 is a bunch of meshes put once after the other...huge memeory... while bones and weights is much more advanced thing.. I'd go for md2 for anything under 600 tris (heh, similar to game space light limit ;) ) And many at once. For all the other cases, I'd go b3d. BTW, Traci's models aren't to high count model, this days. They indeed are low count, but extremely well textured. euhm...wait. hadn't seen that new shot since they're in Aus... well, those could be cinematics models.. Traci, once again, your husband kick ass in art... btw, that coul dbe not to hi poly, but clever transparency maps...and again good texturing. painterly but good. I dunno if b3d allows a percentage of transparency...for th eglasses...would rock... what's that...2000? 2500 tris ? it could be even only 1500... hm...no..more... Can normal maps be made in b3d? |
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| btw, I like the focus of "enjoying the trip" that u took with Chaos moon... :) is probably better when is for having nice time.. |
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| hey bob yeah they're about 2000 polys, (akira is just under 2000, he would have been about 1850 if we could have done alphad hair. We were going to have alphad hair and sunglasses, but the z-ordering in blitz screws up for alphad faces so we had to abandon it :( it meant a lot more polys in the hair though. |
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| I was counting on those being alpha (yep, have my monitor too dark, may have not seen the volume) , then , they're really optimized... I think I'll keep doing art and not learn coding...that way I'll do art for several engines... as I see my self missing alpha maps...and if doing for a non weights engine, I'd be missing... weights like in b3d.Hehe.So on with usual features... when was at work I had them all, but that wont happen again... I'd agree the fun part of an rpg is doing the pencil drawings of the characters (specially Middle Age, sword and fantasy) , writting the story, the fx, and complex coding... Wether gets ended or not, does not matter, actually (for me), if there's something nice to show :) |
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