I think we have a lot more leeway than we think. I remember playing Rebalance a year ago on an older rig and taking on a screenfull of Bounty Hunters (in Slave 1's) without any slowdown problems.

The times I have experienced slowdown were due to excessively flashy weapon effects when playing TNG and in the massive capship battles found in parts of Evolutions (which I think is a combination of the capships and weapons fire).

That said when I have seen models over 5000 polys I have generally found that there were a lot of useless polys or details that could have been put in the texture.

Ithink the best (although more labor intensive) soution would be two versions of the same model. One higher poly model for players and a lower poly model for NPC's.

PantherX, you make a very good point. There often are useless poly's in ships if you look, also about the textures, I believe that you can add the same detail in a ship (if not more) by using more detailed textures as opposed to just 1000's of poly's. Certain programs also add many more poly's than others.

Well, I will be the first to admit that I am not the best modeler or texturer, but I have made a lot ships and textured a few more in the past year. I finished one that a friend made, applying a texture to his model.

This model was supposed to be a blend of Nomad and human texhnology, so he was going for an organic look. He tesselated the living daylights out of the model, I think (made it in 3ds max), but I personally like it - it's pretty darned smooth now (you'd hope so, right? )

But its poly/vert counts are insane, the higest I have ever seen on any FL model. I thought it'd crash all my programs - Milkshape, the CMP exporter, HardCMP, and FL itself.
But, lo and behold, it works just fine.

It has 20587 polygons, and 12985 vertices. I have a bunch of pics of both Milkshape and in-game shots, if anyone would like to see them. Granted, this crazy but cool ship is not a common one, most definately not one assigned to any NPCs (except for Orillion in MSN13), but I never had any trouble with it ...

It's not efficient, hell no, but it is possible.

- Ro9ue
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"Do or do not. There is no try."
- Jedi Master Yoda

Edited by - Ro9ue on 5/30/2005 3:07:41 PM

Generally i go by the current insdustry poly counts used, while i do try my bes to keep poly's as low as possible, averaged standards for low poly models are any models that are 5000 triangles or less.

when it comes to weapons i woudl do waht ever you could to try and keep these models below 100 trianlges for best proformance.

While i do understand that soem designs may require higher poly counts just to have the particular look, but please try to keep models as low as possible in the poly count, the lower the poly count the better the game will run.

@Ro9ue

Polycount is inverse to performance. Tell your friend to learn how to model better- I've seen, skinned and made plenty of things <5000 polygons that look as good as "amateur night" models @ 20K... it's just a matter of being careful with the model and doing a great job with the skin.

Most people who make things with that high of a polycount just don't know how to skin, and think that they'll just make modeled greebles for everything and then use tilemaps... which is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing...

Sorry, the above's not meant to be a personal diss or anything... I'm sure your friend's stuff is neato, and you're a pal for helping him out. I just get very tired of hearing people cite high polycounts as if they've done something smart ...

FL's highest-detail LODs are <2000 polygons, so if you double that... you'd better be showing players double the detail, and equally good skinning. Harrier's models are a good case in point- they have exactly as many polys as they need, and no more. I'm usually more wasteful, but I try to keep things as tight as I can and still get the look I'm after. If I made something >10K, it'd be so detailed that I'd have to have multiple 2048/2048 skins on it (bleah!), and if I made something with 20K... sheesh... skinning it would take a couple of weeks, easy. There's just no point in making things with that polycount- game performance blows at that point anyhow, for anything that's not a static object... and for small things like Fighters, there's absolutely no point, because you'll never see the details anyhow, except when you're in Turret Mode. I guess that means you can make "leet" screenshots... at 20 FPS

I'd just like to post another 2 cents worth.. ,

There is an old saying.., (well if there isnt there should be).. a poorly modelled ship with a great texture is better than a really nicely modelled ship with a crap texture....

I'm afraid that I agree with Argh, the sad fact of the matter is that high polycounts contribute to the possibility of system lag, and not all of us have super computers, I have a friend with an older system who likes to play Freelancer online but stays away from high debris/asteroid/ship concentrations.. mainly because his computer lags and says that battleship encounter mods are very hard to play.. (red lag)

Polycounts should be kept as low as possible and I rarely go above 5000, and make most of my models under 3000 - there are odd exceptions to this but these are mainly larger ships. Over the last year or so I have looked at a lot of models, and many contain 'hidden faces' that since they are not seen but add to the overall polycount, should be removed.

I think people miss a lot with textures as I did when I first started, until a fellow modeller told me he liked my ships but my textures lacked detail (e.g. were crap).. I can now spend a couple of days making a model and a week or more texturing and refining small details.. The modellers best friend is photoshop (or eqivalent that allows you to work with layers), find and do the tutorials .. So it doesnt apply to space fighters, do them anyway, the lighting and bevelling techniques apply to freelancer but a bit of lateral thinking is required sometimes.. but many techniques and tricks can be learnt in one and applied in another....and get into photoshop and simply play..

Surface datails can be done better and look better - if included in a texture, rather than the model - simple box extrusions that look like nothing on a model come to life in game as a grill with the faint outline of pipes and machinery behind it.. or a hatch cover... or an oilstreak that appears to be seeping out under it and pooling and freezing, before being stripped away by atmosphere... leaving traces... Cockpits that are indented and the 'frames' treated with 'rivets' etc.. these sort of things add nothing to polyconts yet a great deal to the look and feel of the model.. Of course the other approach is to model the detail and 'paint it black' relying on the game engine to do the rest, (Then put ten of them maxed out with weapons, turrets, torps, mines etc.. oh and that adds more polys.. ..but they dont matter, they've always been there)...

Perhaps a little extreme but hopefully you'll get my point.

End of diatribe...

Harrier.