wasted polys
Community Forums/Developer Stations/wasted polys
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| Hi everyone I was noticing that in map editors like Deled and Cartography Shop, whenever you build with primitives, there are polys that are wasted. Examples: the bottom and top of cylinders used as collumns, the bottoms of cubes used as steps, where two walls come together at right angles, and so on. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Are there any ways to get rid of these polys, or are they even that big of a problem? |
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| It can be a big problem and could double or even quadruple the amount of polys in your level. Most level editors will have a 'caulk' texture. Polygons textured with this are not exported. I'm not sure if the editors you mention have this but I would be surprised if not. I use Quill3d's level builder - it only exports the faces/polys that you texture. If a wall is formed by a cube and you only texture the visible wall then that is the only part that will be exported. |
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| In CShop you can use a 'caulk' texture for faces you want hidden. |
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| Ah, ok. Thank you for the help. |
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| it's still a waste really, which is why a lot of engines are veering away from BSP or using some hybrid system for collisions and occlusion. for a medium poly detailed game you only need about 1/30th of the polys colideable to get a similar result, so the benefits are diminished a lot in that area. I suppose its convenient for portals and occluding chunks of data, but with good artists and tools you can do a lot more without using CSG editors. Biggest bonus I see is that anyone can pick up a n editor and create something, making a game far easier for a novice to mod, and of course with FPS this is a big bonus and a good way to build a community around your product. |
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| I don't like programmers who will use a longer integer to store a variable that only ranges from 0 - 24 say a 24-hour clock. Instead of using a short integer that will work just as well with less memory, but today with 1GB's of memory people think thats acceptable to waste. When in fact programmers are now programming for PC's and consoles with more power than is needed to accomplish what marketing want. So it's goodbye to brain storming on the Snes to break rules while pushing the console to it's limits. The PS2 hasn't even hit it's potential and the PS3 is alreading coming out. This is the end to logical programming, here comes to technology revolution. So long to breaking rules, so long to better video games. R.I.P... |
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| "it's still a waste really" How is it still a waste if you eliminate all the excess polygons? Brush geometry allows for wonderful things a standard polygon editor can't do, such as: -accurate automatic UV mapping -super-fast collision and line-of-sight tests -efficient portal systems that automatically generate visibility Doom 3 would not be able to process lights in realtime if all map geometry consisted of polygons. Brush geometry will be around for a very long time. |
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| Jono - new Hardware manufacture became so cheap, cheaper than optimizing software. There's only one thing that prevents me from buying new hardware every other day: will it make compatibility troubles with the other components? Will it format my harddrive or something? :/ |
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