Model Requests? (or help)

onionguy92 · Post by **onionguy92** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 12:02 am

okay, here's a request.

There is this car, called the Aptera 2e. It looks amazingly sweet. I won't go into the awesome fuel efficiency and whatnot, that would take too long. Long story short, I made a pretty snazzy model in my gmax, ported it to .3ds, and found that 56,000 polys is apparently too much for the poor little model converter. It crashed. Shame, really. I would have thought that 56,000 polys for a vehicle of which there is only 1 on a world would only be pushing it a little bit. Anyone want to try getting a snazzy but lower-poly model? I can texture if given a template.

Here's a link to a bunch of different views of the Aptera.
http://www.aptera.com/look.php

flametard · Post by **flametard** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:57 am

yeah dude!! i want an aptera so bad! it gets 300 miles per gallon! you wont be seeing them on the road till 2009 apparently. and only in california. but i want one.

fhko · Post by **fhko** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:15 pm

Um...it's an electric car. It doesn't run on units of gallons of anything.

morbydvisns · Post by **morbydvisns** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:48 pm

its got a small engine not connected to the drive train... used for charging the battery. prob something like a 1 liter. has a 5 gallon gas tank

fhko · Post by **fhko** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:53 pm

Fair enough.

dazjorz · Post by **dazjorz** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 8:24 pm

flametard wrote:it gets 300 miles per gallon!

morbydvisns wrote:not connected to the drive train...

------------

fhko wrote:Um...it's an electric car. It doesn't run on units of gallons of anything.

So quoted for truth.

onionguy92 · Post by **onionguy92** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:22 pm

There are actually 2 versions-- the 2e and the 2h. The 2e is all-electric and gets the energy efficiency equivalent of 300 mpg. It has a range of 100 miles per charge and charges in 8 hours off a standard garage outlet. The 2h is a plug-in hybrid that, when charged every 120 miles, gets 320 miles per gallon, and when it isn't charged, gets about 130 miles per gallon. The 2e is being released in California in October. The 2h is being released in 2010. The estimated price is about $30,000. The vehicles will only be sold to California residents at first, so this would be a good time to become good friends with someone in California.

morbydvisns · Post by **morbydvisns** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 1:54 am

peh u can have all that give me

http://www.moparmusclemagazine.com/feat ... index.html

onionguy92 · Post by **onionguy92** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:08 am

lol seriously, though, anyone want to try producing a lower-poly model of the aptera that actually looks good? It's tricky, because organic shapes are smooth and thus tend to result in lots of polys.

Baladin · Post by **Baladin** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 12:57 pm

Sticky this ftw.

Post by **Fooli** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:11 pm

onionguy92 wrote:lol seriously, though, anyone want to try producing a lower-poly model of the aptera that actually looks good? It's tricky, because organic shapes are smooth and thus tend to result in lots of polys.

Tricky yes, 56000 polys prolly not necessary in game, though :) Link to your model? Might be possible to optimise it without rebuilding it completely...

morbydvisns wrote:peh u can have all that give me

As the page loaded logo first I got entirely the wrong (but very amusing) impression about you morb ;)

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flametard · Post by **flametard** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:08 pm

I'm with onion, but screw the model... give me the real thing!!

onionguy92 · Post by **onionguy92** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 12:08 am

Here's the .gmax and .3ds models. Looking back on the model, even if it turned out to be too big to use as a .atm model, it still turned out pretty well, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/lwgzzeo2zjo/aptera.zip

Post by **Fooli** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 12:12 am

That 3ds file is corrupt in some way, which might explain why the MC couldn't handle it...

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onionguy92 · Post by **onionguy92** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 12:14 am

Hmm. That is interesting. Let me see if I can convert the .gmax file to .3ds or .x some other way.

zaroba · Post by **zaroba** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 12:21 am

lol. 50k polies is a bit much.
i'd say at max go with 10k and even that is severely pushing it.

Post by **Fooli** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 12:32 am

Ok, the gmax file works. Um, very nice. But some practice needed at low poly modelling I think :)

I think I'd be right in assuming you started with a simpler shape and meshsmoothed/subdivided the crap outta it. If you have earlier versions of the model I'd go back to those and add necessary detail manually (optimising a meshsmoothed model is a bit pointless, better to go back a few steps methinks).

The main bit of the main chassis is about right, detail wise.

The wheels are 3 or 4 times the detail needed in terms of segments on the cylinder (these are, um, 64 sided i think. A 24 sided wheel is usually enough, and you can often get away with much less. In terms of the horizontal divisions on the tread of the wheel... you have I dunno, 12 or so? Should be 1 :)

Same applies to the axle. It's more round than it needs to be, in terms of cylinder segments, and it doesn't need any divisions (well maybe one or two if you really wanna).

The thing on the roof is about 2x the detail needed - basic shape is ok, it's the side divisions that are too numerous.

And it's the... well I dunno what they are. Wheel pods, I spose... that are the real problem. Yeh they are organic shapes but this level of detail is only needed if you're gonna render it (and even so... prolly not then). They just a bit crazy :)

Don't mean to preach - if you can produce something with this kind of accuracy and proportions and so on, that'd be really helpful for the game. But you can't just subdivide until its this smooth, not for real time rendering anyway. Enough polys to show the shape, no more no less. 3-4000 would be a lot for one vehicle in TU.

Guesstimate, this could be done in 2k polys I reckon. I'm not gonna try though - the engine can't handle steering for this kinda vehicle at the moment (ie, could be done but not with animated wheels. And I like animated things :] )

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onionguy92 · Post by **onionguy92** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 3:14 am

Alright, thanks for the advice. I have some freetime tomorrow, I'm going to try and get a snazzy-looking aptera in under 2k polys.

I got a working 3ds model of the original, btw, and on my not-yet-public world of one person with a blank white texture, it is daaaamn fine. Not sure how fps will hold up with a real texture (that will probs come tomorrow too) and multiple vehicles on one world, so the model I upload for sharing will probably be the low-poly one.

Post by **Fooli** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 9:23 am

Cool.

One other thing to note: if you end up with a 3000, 4000 poly vehicle it's not necessarily the end of the world - but you'll need to produce medium and low LoD versions of it to help people maintain a decent framerate. Should really do LoD versions of all models. It's a pain but v. worthwhile in the end.

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zaroba · Post by **zaroba** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 1:34 pm

are LODs even worth putting in? all the time i've seen them the game switched to the lowest detail when you were still pretty close to the model thus making it look horrible. even for texmaps and surface tiles, just be a few tiles away and LOD takes effect leaving them blurry when your still very close to them.

as for people who suffer from fps issues, thats why pcs can be upgraded

i believe it was you, fooli, who a while back said something along the lines of:
"eventually you just have to accept that you need to upgrade or get left behind"