Mesh Simplification Tools?

[OneSadCookie]

OK, so I've made my model in Wings 3D (very cool program :))

http://203.79.121.211/~keith/Personal/dino_pic.jpg

But it has 5500 triangles, which is a few too many for a game that should run on a Rage 128 :)

Are there any free tools for Mac OS X which can reduce the polygon count of my model? I found a free mesh decimation tool (http://meshalgorithms.sourceforge.net/) on OpenGL.org/Sourceforge.net, but, to put it bluntly, it sucked.

Thanks!

[Mars_999]

Leave the Rage 128 behind and look to the future. I would say shoot for a Geforce 2MX but good GOD that is old as dirt to! Anyway just wanted to say nice model. Looks good! What will the textures look like?

[OneSadCookie]

Even the GeForce2MX is going to have problems with multiple 5K-poly animated characters on-screen at once. I don't want to abandon the Rage 128 until the majority of casual gamers have upgraded, which is probably still 2-3 years off.

I probably want 3-4 different LODs for the model -- 2K (for GeForce3+), 1K (for GeForce4MX/Radeon7500), 500 (for GeForce2MX/Radeon/Rage128) and 250 (for distant models).

I don't know what the textures will look like, I'm no artist and I've never made a texture before. I'll try to go for the "Dink the Little Dinosaur" feel, though.

[Mars_999]

If I remember right, I thought I read somewhere that the new videocards like 9000+ and Geforce 3+ could handle 100,000+ polygons in a single scene?

[OneSadCookie]

More, if all you do is glCallList once...

Once you add physics, lighting, animation, and the sheer fact that you need more than one drawing command, the numbers drop significantly.

[henryj]

This is about as good as it gets...

http://www.cbloom.com/3d/galaxy3/index.html

This is Doom3 style stuff.

[OneSadCookie]

Hmm, looks like a significant porting job.

I don't suppose there's any chance it's already been ported? ;)

[burden]

He has a nice face. :)

I suspect that you could build this guy with well under 1000 tris without sacrificing much of his basic sillhouette.

Some thoughts, short of finding a good automatic way to do this:

If you must keep this version of the model, I'd just start collapsing edges manually, taking down contiguous rows of quads where possible. You'd be surprised how quick that goes.

Focus on the legs and tail, which could have five or six faces, and on the broad, flat expanses of his sides and chest, which represent some very oblique angles that are probably too subtle for your budget.

Alternatively, think about rebuilding from scratch. To make it easier, take screenshots on the X and Z axes and import them as TIFs to use as guides for the general shape.

I usually find it useful, when aiming for low polycounts, to work from a cube, extruding and adding detail as necessary, rather than cobbling together more complex primitives.

GL :)

[henryj]

Hmm, looks like a significant porting job.

I don't suppose there's any chance it's already been ported

Not that I know of. I'm sure your're up to the job. Let me know when you've finish. I'd find it useful too:)

[Mars_999]

Originally posted by henryj
Not that I know of. I'm sure your're up to the job. Let me know when you've finish. I'd find it useful too:)

Ditto!

[codemattic]

Originally posted by OneSadCookie
OK, so I've made my model in Wings 3D (very cool program.

But it has 5500 triangles, which is a few too many for a game that should run on a Rage 128 :)

Are there any free tools for Mac OS X which can reduce the polygon count of my model?

Does Wing3D not allow you to control the level of subdivision detail when you export it as a mesh?

[OneSadCookie]

If it does, I haven't figured out how it works :)

The problem is, you have the model as you see it in the wireframe at the top of the thread, but that needs to be subdivided to produce the image on the right-hand-side; then that needs to be triangulated to be useful for a game.

Maybe I could pick and choose which polygons to subdivide and do OK that way by hand...

[burden]

Maybe I'm missing something...

Originally posted by OneSadCookie
that needs to be subdivided to produce the image on the right-hand-side


But does it need to be subdivided to produce a model suitable for your game?

What's wrong with Mr 1375 Triangles on the left? Especially once he has a skin and adequate shading ingame?

[OneSadCookie]

Left is actually around 1700 triangles, and the face and tail look crap at that resolution.

I tried just subdividing the head, tail and feet, but I still got a 3K triangle model out the end :(

[Carlos Camacho]

OSC, what format can you output to? I could run it through Cinema4D for you and reduce the polygons, save it and send it back to you. Sorry no "free" advice.

[OneSadCookie]

ndo, 3ds, obj, VRML2, and maybe some others. Thanks for the offer, Carlos, I may take you up on that in the future! For the moment, one of my PC-ridden friends was able to do it for me with a free PC tool.

[codemattic]

In the Wings3D menus you see a little box on the right hand side of some menu items. It looks almost like a checkbox. If you click that - you get the menu command - but it brings up a dialog of extra options.

In the Export->Wavefront(obj) extra dialog it lets you set how many "Sub-division steps" for example.

Does this help - or did you know about this already? Or do you need even less points than you get with subdivision 0?

[OneSadCookie]

The problem is that some parts (head, tail) need at least one subdivision step, which produces too many triangles.