Tarsus...

[BradMick]

Yep, name says it all, for that's what it is. My poly limit for this is 10,000....in fact, my poly limit for all the ships is 10,000. Gotta love high end graphics cards

Anyway, shouldn't be to much longer before its done and I start on the Orion.

Brad Mick



forgot...she's sitting pretty at 4684 tris right now....

[HammerHead]

Looking darn GREAT!

[Aron Figaro]

Very nice Tarsus, though the poly count's a little high...

[BradMick]

See, that's the beauty of it. The poly count ISN'T to high. Modern graphics cards will chew this thing up and spit it back out like it's nothin. Last I checked combat flight sim/flight sim (in general) has planes of 10,000 polys or less. Most stick around 3500, to 4500 polys. I figure that since i'm doing Privateer stuff, or Wing Commander stuff in general, it needs to be done right and as beautiful as possible for modern graphics stuff.

BradMick

[Corsair(pilot)]

Nice job, and good polygon efficiency! I always liked the Privateer ships... mostly the galaxy.

[Maj.Striker]

Very nice. However, 10,000 seems excessive for the amount of detail that's there. My Tiger Claw model, for example, is only about 5500 polys...not that it's a great model or anything but 10,000 for a tarsus is ok if it has great deal of detail, this one apparently does not (or maybe I'm missing it), seems like you could reduce the poly count significantly without losing anything...Just my humble opinion.

[BradMick]

Originally Posted by Maj.Striker

Very nice. However, 10,000 seems excessive for the amount of detail that's there. My Tiger Claw model, for example, is only about 5500 polys...not that it's a great model or anything but 10,000 for a tarsus is ok if it has great deal of detail, this one apparently does not (or maybe I'm missing it), seems like you could reduce the poly count significantly without losing anything...Just my humble opinion.

note that i stated what the poly count stood at



anyway...here's the new updated one....it shows her triangulated as she is still unfinished. she'll be done tonight hopefully. who knows. CURRENT POLY COUNT IS 5076.

BradMick

[BradMick]

Didnt mean to ignore you corsair,

thanks for the comments. I'm trying to be as efficient as possible because i want as much detail as possible. the thing that sucks about the old wing commander ships, with sprites, you can do however detailed models you want, because all you're creating is a damn image. this gets a bit trickier. thank god for modern 3d graphics

By the way, your work is amazing too dude. Look forward to seeing your completed work

BradMick

[Eder]

Good job, that looks real good. The polycount sounds about right too, I mean, it's a very simple design, but you still need a lot of triangles for all those damned cylinder engine things. Personally, I'd rather add some more details to the corners of the boxy part, though. They look kinda "sharp" for a high-detail model, specially considering the smoothness of the rounded parts.

[BradMick]

it's a game model. i was considering beveling the edges..but..it would raise the count a bit TO high. If I were doing her high res, she'd be peaking around 70,000 easy, as i'd be modeling hull plates, etc..etc..

Brad Mick

[Delance]

The Tarsus never looked so good.

[Dundradal]

except when we finally got enough money to get rid of it and buy a nice centurion...

[BradMick]

nearly done now...



7618 POLYS. Needs cleaning, a lot of cleaning.


BradMick

[Moonsword]

It looks great.

[scheherazade]

make a couple versions, go like

25K
10K
5K
1K
250

5 LOD's, and then it'll be game-suitable.
so long as the game has LOD's that is.

which vegastrike does btw. and it handles 50K models EZ without framerate drops.

a proper high detail hull plated tarsus would rock out.

-scheherazade

[Cam]

The polycount should really depend on the use of the model--if you plan on rendering close-up shots for a high quality animation, you can go much higher than 10,000 polys. That being said, you can still put in a lot of details not seen on the original Tarsus to give it your own personal touch. How about a custom paint job, coupled with some rust to make it look like a well used privateer's ship? Combined with your modelling, it can provide a really realistic model.

Good work on the Tarsus! I hope you do a Centurion.

[BradMick]

Originally Posted by scheherazade

make a couple versions, go like

25K
10K
5K
1K
250

5 LOD's, and then it'll be game-suitable.
so long as the game has LOD's that is.

which vegastrike does btw. and it handles 50K models EZ without framerate drops.

a proper high detail hull plated tarsus would rock out.

-scheherazade

Only problem is, you couldn't have many ships on screen in a game enviroment. I'd love to do up like a 100k+ model, that'd be sweetness, but...alas, you could only have like..one of those in the game. Even if you used LOD's. Unfortunately i've had to put on hold my WC modeling project because I really REALLY need to focus on my Demo Reel so I can get a job.

Brad Mick

the 50K centurions ran 100+ fps with a flight(4) of them on screen.

i'm sure if they were 25K, with lesser LOD's for greater distances, it would run even better.

plus remember, games like quake have well over 250K faces in the visible environment at any time, and they can post FPS's over 500 on good machines.

so a space-sim with a couple 50K models isn't actaully that stressful on a decent machine.

-scheherazade

[Tolwyn]

yeah, but apply enviromental mapping, specular mapping, glow mapping and such plus high res backgrounds and you will experience a fps drop. I am speaking from my own experience.

Example:

Wing Commander Saga started with a 200 MHz CPU and TNT graphic card, now it requires a fast Geforce 3 to play without FPS drops (and even then you may experience problems). A Radeon 9500 + should handle the game without problems, BUT: there are no high poly ships in the game, highest poly count is around 3000 polies.

[scheherazade]

you should treat your geometry and texture pipelines separately.

it is true that high rez textures and background will slow things down.
but lowering your polycount _won't_ speed it up.
you have to go to the source of the problem.

for example, you can take what you have now, and replace your ships with boxes (but using the same textues), and your fps will only go up a little bit.

this is of course to some limit, I.E. 20 ships at once and you'll start to see some drop with your 3K models (but it'll be a linear degradation, not an instant crash in fps like when you exceed texture memory and start using AGP mem)

saturate your textures, using simple boxes.
see what texture resolutions you can use before FPS really drops.

then make super high poly spheres, with crap 4x4 textures, and see how high you can get your polys before fps gets too slow.

then back both off a bit and you have a good setup.


i can say without a doubt, that you can go higher than you are (seeing from the fs2 models in shots).
you may upset people with aged systems, but anyone with recent stuff (that wasn't some off the shelf dell that comes with integrated crap of course) will not even see a change in performance, but will see the change in looks.

we've used 3-7K models in mfq3 since 2 years ago. and have some that are 15K now.
plus the environment has its own couple 100 K to add to that (its quake so..).
and everything uses textures well over 512 (1024x1024 is typical for a single texture and that would cover a single wing surface or something...)

i get (1500mhz w/ 9700pro) around 90 fps constant at 1600x1200x32.

so without a doubt you can go higher

maybe FS2 engine has some overhead in itself that doesn't scale as well as quake, so you might not be able to be as frivalous with textures and geometry. but nevertheless, you should still be able to handle (in fs2) 5-7K with 2 or 3 1024x1024 maps, in an up to date system (not the latest, but a 'good' setup).

i guess the real problem is in the hardware disparity.
you can have:
a fresh 9800XT with 256 megs
a 9700 with 128
a gf4 with 128
a gf3 with 64
a gf2 with 32
a 7500/8500

ALL of these you can call new, or at least recent. but the performance between the top of the list and the bottom is jaw dropping.

what i say wouldn't be right for the bottom of the list at all. (well, things still scale the same way, but the max tolerance is much less).

if you're aimed at the bottom of the list as your typical user, then you're dead on, don't change a thing.

but if you're to the middle or top, then you can afford a lot more polys than 3K/model.


-scheherazade

P.S. tolwyn
i'm not telling you what to do, in case my rant sounds like that.
i love the progress you guys have made. its totally amazing.
i love your stuff

[powell99]

i wish i could make cg models

[Tolwyn]

you got exactly what I am talking about With Radeon 9500 and never models will work fine. But even with Geforce 4 you will experience a few problems unles swe are using pcx maps. With TGA high res maps you will need a Radeon 9500 if you want to have decent frame rates (with Geforce 4 you have around 15fps, which is not enough).

Due to this fact we are adding pcx backgrounds as well. Result: 60 fps on older systems

[BradMick]

Hello all, i've started work on my V.2 of my Tarsus. So far i'm much happier. Shooting again for just shy of 10,000. Still a bit to do yet, but..shouldn't be much longer till its done...hopefully.

Brad Mick

[Grimloc]

That looks great, Brad. I need to get back into this kind of stuff, but all I have is Blender/The Gimp at home, and Maya (on a crap SGI)/Photoshop (on a crap Mac) at work. Since I'm only proficient in Photoshop and 3ds MAX, I've got a ways to go...

...I could get VMWare, install an old DOS with Windows 3.11 (maybe) and install my ancient copy of 3d Studio R2...

...But I don't have the parallel port dongle anymore...

[Grimloc]

WAIT! I just opened the box! I DO have the dongle!

[BradMick]

ahh..finished. here we go, next to texture.


Poly Count is at 6914....MUCH better over the other...especially for the amount of detail i think.

Brad Mick

[BradMick]

heh heh...now i'm really done. forgot the radar in that last one..here go.

Brad Mick