Modeling

[gregsandor]

One cause of render errors in objects is 5-sided polygons.  To solve, triangulate the facet.

[MooseDog]

n-gons are the enemy! 

[rcallicotte]

It's funny.  One of the major tutorials for Silo emphasizes the value of getting rid of all triangles in the 3D model.

[gregsandor]

Model in quads where possible. 

[rcallicotte]

@gregsandor - Right!  I wonder about how that works with Planetsides "modeling" of the terrain, etc. - it's in triangles, correct?

[gregsandor]

I model in quads mainly because its easier to see what I'm doing and to make good topology.  There are advantages to triangles, particularly for terrain features.  As for how the two types work together:  just fine.   The computer doesnt care.

[DeathTwister]

Hi all,

  Yep I agree with the triangles as I have been having the same trouble, but I am not convinced that it is what it looks like. It has to do with the renderer.  Now I  tried to bring this model into TG2, but there were over 38 mesh parts to the model and even though I split in into 3 parts with the .mtl file is still did not see many of the meshes and I think there is an over all limit with these kinds of models to only 32 or so then it just craps out on us, but I could be wrong, and wish I could be on the beta team just for this section of the TG2 App.

This is what it looks like in Vue as a quicky Shot just to show it works in every app from Max, XSI, Vue, Poser, Bryce, Daz, and just about every other App I work with but TG2, sad to say



As you can see it looks just fine.  The I went back into it with build 3 and rendered out the same file and got these.



Now as you can see not all the Stones are getting mapped, even though I have all the .mtl files in place right, so there does seem to be an upper limit to how many Meshes you can get into this app at this time.  These are Triangle mesh as you said and may have allot to do with it.

With build 4, which by the way they said they fixed the bug rendering problem, I got this after I rendered it again in the latest build and I still get all kinds of  Anomalies, and no way to flip normals like you would normally do, so WTF Watson? So I rendered this  out at 1 full render.



Now color me stupid, but that seams like they got it worse then better.  So here lies a very dead temple and no idea when we can get fixes on all this stuff.

  Oh by the way, very cool buildings and I think you can put a transparency Shader on it for the windows to get them so you can see through and maybe a reflection shader to get it to look like glass, but your right, I am pretty sure this is all on Planet Side. At least that is the way it is looking to me right now.

PS: It also messes up the rest of the render as well as you can see the Black areas where for some reason it decided to not to render there???Der???

DT

[gregsandor]

Ususlly when parts of my models render black its because theres no shader for that part.

As for having too many parts, combine the groups.  The building I posted above is one group; the doors and windows do not open so no need for more.

[cyphyr]

Any chance you could send me the file (obj?)
I'd like to see what it looks like run through Lightwave and Modeler.
Richard

[Mandrake]

I think Greg may have a handle on your problem. I'm working on a model that has 60 different mesh parts and that's only after connecting a whole bunch together. /i could see where this might happen if you you are using selection type materials.
In other words you are selecting some polys on a mesh and applying a material, then selecting other sections of the same mesh and applying another material. I know this is a standard practice but if I do that with C4D, and export it, only one material will come through to tg2. With one mesh, one material, I've never had that happen. Or I could be off and this has nothing to do with your problem.

[SeerBlue]

I don't know about a limit DT, here is a small pic of a scene my daughter has worked on in sketchup for her D and D game, everything is a model, from the terrain up, and it is alot more than 32 meshes, as each roof, section of wall, and building, is its own component. Now I don't know just how she got it all to work, her and her brothers have more success at this than I do, but this is the free version.
SeerBlue

[Oshyan]

There are no "hard" (e.g. programmed) limits. Any limits on what you can do are generally down to resource limitations. TG2 at present can only use up to a maximum of 4GB of RAM (in a 64 bit OS; less in a 32 bit OS), so this may be the source of limits in cases where many very complex objects are being used. Any extremely complex scene will ultimately run into limits, especially in a 32 bit application. But again there is no hard limit like this and you should for example be able to use literally 100's of simple models.

- Oshyan

[jo]

Hi,

Or if they are instanced using the populator, hundreds of thousands.

Regards,

Jo

[Oshyan]

Millions in fact. I've successfully gone up to over 6 million instances in 6+ populations of relatively complex Xfrog objects on Vista x64 with 8GB of RAM. So there's actually a surprising amount of headroom.

- Oshyan

[Tangled-Universe]

Millions in fact. I've successfully gone up to over 6 million instances in 6+ populations of relatively complex Xfrog objects on Vista x64 with 8GB of RAM. So there's actually a surprising amount of headroom.

- Oshyan

I can second this, my latest work had 10 VHQ populations with even more instances and rendered in XP64 with also 8GB RAM.