well currently the only 3d program able to export to CMP is milkshape and 1.6.6 has a max poly limit of less than 15K.

1.7.0 has less than 25K polylimit i think.

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And just remember, each poly that you put on your ship has to be rendered by the game. so a ship with a very high poly count will more than likely produce lag.

highest i have ever put into FL is 13K. and it started producing lag on the server.

Roland "Hobbes" Orr
Founder, Samurai Studios

max poly count for milkshape 1.7.0 is exactly 65534 triangles. The max poly count for freelancer however does not have a straight answer, it's more of a limit on your video card, also you have to consider that it's not just one ship which is on your screen at a time in freelancer, you have a multitude of npcs, other players, and static base objects which add together on your vid cards poly crunching power. Regardless though, that is certainly not going to be an efficient low poly model, and not something which you would place in a mod for other people, because if your card can handle it, you have to consider for people on "built into motherboard" graphic cards lol.

Personally none of my models have gone over 3000 polys.

edit: on the note of milkshapes max poly count, the max vertex count is also 65534 for what milkshape can handle.



Edited by - black_lightning on 4/3/2004 5:33:55 PM

Ok so I will keep it under 65k of triangles then. My comp has no problem with tons of polys I made in 3dsmax a 2mill poly model but I couldnt export it it was just to much polys.


PS I am Hacked

AKA: Alpha_One.
I AM THE LEADER OF CLAN UTDF TREMBLE BEFORE US!

Ok, how would I reduce the poly count?

Also, when you make ships.... I'd recommend not doing it in milkshape, but instead in decent programs. Milkshape proves the quality you get for 20 bucks. After you make the shio, export it into milkshape with like, a dxf files, a 3ds, or whichever.

As for the poly limit, it does go into milkshape, but also realize it has to do with your own computer. Your PC might not be able to handle one of those ships ingame, only a render in milkshape or whatnot.

lmfao, for 20 bucks milkshape is a steal compared to the $3000 of the other programs, If your going by bang per buck, milkshape is the best program for 3d modelling. Please refrain from claimless banter until you have used such programs for a length of time so as to know what they can actually do. There are a number of features that milkshape has which some of the higher end programs do not, one of such being the ability to use .dds textures which freelancer uses, (you'll have to search all over to find plugins to activate .dds on other "high end" programs)

As I said before, most of the banter against milkshape is because people can't find warez for it and actually have to pay $20 while all their other programs are ripped, that's the real reason why people are against milkshape. And why they don't spend enough time to actually learn how to use it effectively.

Nah...Truespace is better...

Some older versions are even free for download....

actually, my milkshape issue is very simple: the user interface sucks. and in terms of bang for buck, a freeware copy of gmax beats milkshape any day of the week.

milkshape is a good program for the ammount of money you spend on registering it, don't get me wrong. but the UI has to be one of the most useless and counterintuitive interfaces i've ever run across. THATS why i hate it.

oh, and in terms of not finding warez on ms3d.. erm.. yeah, i just wanted to double check that statment - and after 2 mins of search kazaa i found a crack. i registered my copy.. but the warez issue is a bit dead, i would think...

anyhow, getting back to the original question of polygon count - i always try to reduce my poly count whenever i can, retriangulating squares, etc... because i am a neatfreak, when it comes to modeling. i think a good max poly count is about 2k, but here's a suggestion on ideas - go download the .cmp importer from the downloads section of the site here, and see how many polygons the original game's ships have.

What are the old LEGAL free versions? Also I use Gmax becasue my 3dsmax expired 10 days ago so I have to use GMax but I wan to use Milkshape for texturing becaseu I heard it was good. Also I dont want to pay for this stuff because I would rather buy a game then something I use just to make a ship.

AKA: Alpha_One.
I AM THE LEADER OF CLAN UTDF TREMBLE BEFORE US!

I agree with Firewing completely. When I make ships, I use trueSpace 5, quality program, and then save as .dxf format. So easy to use and produce models that look good, without being too simple.

Of all the systems, in all the galaxy, you had to fly into mine.