Poly count for BZII models and props to optimize performance in game.

[Lizard]

None of my units have been released....maybe its one of Lizards daleks?

yeah it's probably the dalek I included as an easter egg in FE, the high polygon count certainly fits the bill I think mine was nearly 2,000 polys.

[mrtwosheds]

I never did find it.

[Nielk1]

I find that when going over 3000 polies, BZ2 crashes, but does not give the "to many polies error". I think it gives that around 5000.

[mrtwosheds]

hate rap music Tongue (as in erg)

? ? ? ?

3000 polys is far too much for a game like bz2. Getting near to 1000 is a bad idea.

[Lizard]

I never did find it.

It's hidden in the FeData.pak file somewhere, I don't have FE installed or anything at the moment or I'd take a look and tell you where I hid it.


I also hid a shadow battlecrab ( unskinned) from babylon 5 in there somewhere aswell.

[TheJamsh]

hate rap music Tongue (as in erg)

someone said something about 2shed soundign rapper like :S

and yeh there is a Dalek in there but i dont remember where it is :@...

are babylon 5 ships abailable? a lot of the links on bzscrap are broken or the zips dont work properly...

shame

[Nielk1]

The B5 ships never worked very well. I think they ended up being hack jobs!

Back then though, cutting edge BZ modding.

[TheJamsh]

dont even know what they are =S never seen them... jsut wondered if some new XSI's were floating around heh

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

TS 3.2 appears to automatically triangulate all faces in the object in real time as they are created in the workspace, but in GSL 1.5 the faces are triangulated upon saving to the X format. So 650 faces could easily translate into more like 1300 faces after saving them as X. Then they'd did to be edited in TS anyways. So I guess the best method would be to use TS in the first place. However, and this is where GSL comes in handy as a UVW mapper and unwrap utility, but that's a whole nother topic and I won't get into detail in this tread.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

I found another way to optimized a model by using a tool in GSL called, separate selected part of object; it doesn't delete the face rather it makes a copy of the face. It is accessed by right clicking the model, selecting the face to separate from the edit menu and then clicking the icon. The face is now detached from the main object. This can be used to separate lots of faces to create hollow objects that I would imagine could be welded together again to form optimized objects that don't need to be solid. It sort of reminds me of a shell like those seen in the cockpit objects. Don't know much about it, but I've noticed lots of BZII XSI models that make use of these things.

 

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Lately, I found out that triangulating a model prior to saving it as an X file isn't really necessary prior to converting it to XSI via BZ2ME or 3DEX 1.5.5. Part of the problem with using a low poly modeler like GSL is the 650 face count limit imposed by the the free version of Gamespace. You won't notice this initially, but once you load the triangulated model again for reediting you'll notice the vast increase in the number of faces that make up a triangulated object.

This setting can be disabled in the X export settings of GSL by selecting the settings option that pops up when you go to save an X file. Another panel pops up with an option to triangulate all faces which can be un-xed to keep the face count the same as the original models face count.

Another poly reduction technique is to use the object union tool to permanently attach non critical objects to other model assemblies. An example of this might be something like making a tank door hatch and attaching it to the main turret assembly and using the union tool rather then gluing it as a child or sibling. 

[shane ward]

Speeking of babylon 5 I have a new mod for freespace 2 which has a mass amount of Babylon 5 Ships in it. Everything you can think of.   

Now, Take into account the assimulation mod, and what it has in there,

A load of ships from freespace to.

So it should be easy for me to convert all the babylon 5 ships to bz2 using the same I dear I made for my mod.

But..... It's been a while.......

[TheJamsh]

unfortunately, blender 3D does not triangulate all faces in real time or saving to other formats. and im pretty sure BZII will not support over 3 vertex's per polygon...

perhaps i may be able to open it in truespace and save it to .x format using that? hmm. trouble is blender is TOO powerful for the likes of this game... i read it was used in the spiderman 2 film for soem of the CGI!!!

[bigbadbogie]

If blender is too powerful, what about 3dsmax?? 

[mrtwosheds]

and im pretty sure BZII will not support over 3 vertex's per polygon...

Most of the xsi models for bz2 are un-triangulated.
My problem is that I cannot convert to .xsi without triangulating them!