Spring RTS Engine

All I found were some subdividision modifiers and a button which says auto-smooth but it didn't do anything.

KDR_11k wrote:Your poly use has caydresque proportions.

SUNDAY

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CAYDRESQUE VS SMOTHING the fight of the century, who will win? What models will survive!

you forgot the token "whoooooo will die?"

rattle wrote:All I found were some subdividision modifiers and a button which says auto-smooth but it didn't do anything.

It's in the Mesh Tools box. F9 in edit mode, may need to scroll a bit to see it.

Highpoly on standalone units is fine, such as Commanders, super-units and other objects that will be seen rarely or only a small ammount at a time.

Although that ship that you rendered could use a ton of optimization, there are many better ways that you could achieve that same shape and outline with less than half of the faces used.

Units that will be massed with many onscreen at 1 time, need to be as low as possible.

A good guideline to use in making these models would be as follows.

1. Massed/spammed units, light combat, multiple buildings, tons on screen 1-450

2. Labs, mid-game units, heavy units, specialty units, complex buildings. 450-1000

3. Super units, flagships, Krogoth class, Commanders, rare or not easily massed units. 1000-3000

To meet with lower spec PC players.

First of all, with most games of Spring the bottleneck is the CPU/processor time but it's not unreasonable to see a situation where you could run into a GPU bottleneck. Caydr(Cyder/Cadyr?) ran a bunch of test way back and showed something like 50 Peewees (what, 150 Faces?) and 50 of his ridiculously high quality models (like 5000 faces or something) ran at about the same frame rate on a reasonably good card.

SinbadEV wrote:First of all, with most games of Spring the bottleneck is the CPU/processor time but it's not unreasonable to see a situation where you could run into a GPU bottleneck. Caydr(Cyder/Cadyr?) ran a bunch of test way back and showed something like 50 Peewees (what, 150 Faces?) and 50 of his ridiculously high quality models (like 5000 faces or something) ran at about the same frame rate on a reasonably good card.

Sounds good.

I vote for Smothing.

SinbadEV: The tests Caydr run were run on a higher-end computer, with the units mostly stationary.

As a PC developer, every opportunity to optimise your content (models, textures, code etc) must be taken.

Reducing polies is only ONE aspect of optimisation.

Anyone can make a model look great at 5000 polies, but what makes a great modeller is one that can cut it town to 3000 polies and still have the unit look great.

There's a gross misconception on how polycounts affect performance here, propagated by people who have not done any real modelling work for modern, commercial game engines.

I've said it before and i'll say it again. Polycount in itself DOES NOT have much bearing on performance.

HOWEVER, when you factor in other things that are dependant on models such as animations, pathing, and most importantly graphical effects such as HDRI reflections, shading, bloom, HDRI lighting, texture size, POLYCOUNTS MATTER A GREAT DEAL IN PERFORMANCE as they increase GPU load by an order of magnitude.
To illustrate my point, I will open up a couple of models made by a professional game development studio. I'm sure these do not need any introduction.

These two units' polycounts are low by today's standards, but they both look great thanks to the texturing.

One more point that backs up my statement of fact is that Normal Mapping, Parallax mapping, Level-of-Detail scaling and other "tricks" were developed to reduce polies while increasing detail.

In conclusion, high-poly DOES NOT EQUAL high-quality. High poly models can still look like shit if the modeller is not skilled enough to utilise the polies well, and super-low poly models can look awesome with skillful use of polies and good texturing.

Standard unit polycount:


"Hero unit" polycount without the bones:

Polygon count is pretty much irrelevant unless we are talking something silly like over 10k. It's just the number that happens to be most tangible. There is no reason to not use for example rounded surfaces with many polygons like cylinders if you want to. Amount of pixel fragments on screen is more important then number of polygons. This is especially true for advanced shaders. They compute more stuff per pixel fragment then per vertex, and normally there's lots more fragments then vertices. Especially if LOD is used correctly, and it should be.

Of course, a crap looking model is a crap looking model, highpoly or not. Textures are sometimes better to add some sorts of detailing for aesthetic reasons, not performance.

As a PC developer, every opportunity to optimise your content (models, textures, code etc) must be taken.

I sort of minorly disagree with the above, to some extent. Instead of optimising everywhere and as much as possibly, optimise where it does the most good per time spent, and only when actually necessary. Don't spend 2 hours on trying to go from 1800 to 1700 polygons.

Also, look at the models above again, their actually not very optimised at all. Missile fins and stuff on rockets inside the launcher? Wheels that can't be seen at all? It's hard to see with the triangulated polygons what actually is where. The robot model you can't even see the polygons at all, and it has 5k pollys that I bet are not that well utilised.

I use whatever I want, but am optimizing currently, due to being phail for making half my T1 suck, getting a "growth spurt" of skillz, then coming back and having to redo that half..

Needless to say, the units look better with ~75% or less polys and a better, more utilized UV map.

It is important to use good modeling sense, I know my optimizations are probably still not perfect but frankly you do what you can.

Wolf: Wow, just from the textured and shaded view I would have guessed those units to be an order of magnitude lower in their polycount. Those wireframes look like a total mess and those super-round wheels can't be seen at all in the textured view. Some parts of their texturing look like 3do. In short, for that resource footprint they look like shit.

Good that we are at the Topic texture, I've a problem. It seems like Snipawolf's UV Mapping Tutorial for Wings is out of date ( http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=10612 ), because there are Options I don't have and another menu in the Pictures.

...Click said box if...

This "said box" Option doesn't exist.

Now, make sure you have everything selected. Right click and find "Create Texture" at the bottom of the menu. When you click on this,
you will see this menu:

mmh This isn't the menu that I have.

So, select Window->Outliner, at the top:

There's a "Window" Button?

Are you using wings3d, because that is what the tutorial is for...

Also, make the posts in the tutorial section, I'll give you directions and it will be easier..

(Also, said box means the checkbox, make sure it has a check on it. There is no box called "Said Box")

Zpock: The missiles fly out when fired and respawn.

KDR_11k wrote:Wolf: Wow, just from the textured and shaded view I would have guessed those units to be an order of magnitude lower in their polycount. Those wireframes look like a total mess and those super-round wheels can't be seen at all in the textured view. Some parts of their texturing look like 3do. In short, for that resource footprint they look like shit.

Lol, a little too heavy on the sarcasm there? I'm not a noob to game modelling, I know what i'm talking about. Spring isn't the only game engine i've worked on. Heck, i've modelled for non-game projects as well.

But i'm surprised you criticised the mesh by saying the "wireframes look like a total mess", since you're a modeller yourself (iirc).

Nevertheless, i'll try to explain your points. Firstly, it looks like a mess because it is in tris, not quads. The mesh is 2342 polies, or more accurately, tris. When converted to quads, its a pretty clean mesh.

Secondly, I did notice the higher amount of polies used for the track curves on the front and back, and experimented cutting those polies out before testing it ingame. To make a long story short, it looked strange ingame when I zoomed in to max, so its probably a game engine thing.

Another point is that the in-game models were used for promo rendersas well. It isn't excessively "super round" as you make it out to be either. And there is something in 3D modelling programs called "rotate Perspective view".

About the texture, i've only enabled the diffuse texture in Max.
And it looks better than any 3DO textures there, in fact better than most, if not all the textures anyone on these amateur modding forums have done. Ingame, both at max zoom and min zoom, it looks good.
Why don't you guess what is its texture size?

Nevertheless, I admit these two aren't the best, prime examples of super-optimised 0-poly-waste models; i've seen better work in Warcraft 3's modelling and Supreme Commander.
But these were the most convenient since i'm already modding for C&C Generals and was curious about the improvements to the engine in C&C3, and you know how EA is with their employees sometimes.

Wolf-In-Exile wrote:Zpock: The missiles fly out when fired and respawn.

And? The projectile can use a different model. I doubt the engine requires the whole projectile to be part of the launching unit.

Lol, a little too heavy on the sarcasm there? I'm not a noob to game modelling, I know what i'm talking about. Spring isn't the only game engine i've worked on. Heck, i've modelled for non-game projects as well.

But i'm surprised you criticised the mesh by saying the "wireframes look like a total mess", since you're a modeller yourself (iirc).

May just be the ortho view but the wireframe looks a lot messier than it should be for that shape, especially the tracks.

Secondly, I did notice the higher amount of polies used for the track curves on the front and back, and experimented cutting those polies out before testing it ingame. To make a long story short, it looked strange ingame when I zoomed in to max, so its probably a game engine thing.

Sounds like an engine problem but that's still not efficient poly use, that tank seriously looks like it could have been done with 250 tris without much visible difference.

Another point is that the in-game models were used for promo rendersas well.

Bad reason. The model goes ingame, it should be designed for ingame. Leaving promo render stuff on there wastes resources.

It isn't excessively "super round" as you make it out to be either. And there is something in 3D modelling programs called "rotate Perspective view".

Twelve sides on wheels you can barely see. That's rounder than it needs to be. If you made those tracks solid blocks, do you think anyone would be able to tell? Considering the texture blurs at that res those wheels are superfluous. The most eye-catching parts of the model are quadrangular, that really doesn't convey a sense of 2k polies.

About the texture, i've only enabled the diffuse texture in Max.
And it looks better than any 3DO textures there, in fact better than most, if not all the textures anyone on these amateur modding forums have done. Ingame, both at max zoom and min zoom, it looks good.
Why don't you guess what is its texture size?

Spontaneously I'd guess 512x512, 256x256 would be possible too (512x256?), not sure how much UV space that thing really needs. It may look better than amateur material but it's not pro material, at least not pro enough to command a decent wage.

Nevertheless, I admit these two aren't the best, prime examples of super-optimised 0-poly-waste models; i've seen better work in Warcraft 3's modelling and Supreme Commander.
But these were the most convenient since i'm already modding for C&C Generals and was curious about the improvements to the engine in C&C3, and you know how EA is with their employees sometimes.

Well, not the best idea to drag out a badly optimized model when you're trying to show low waste, is it? I figure EA doesn't require that much from their entry-level positions to deal with their turnover (do they still have so much turnover? AFAIK the "overtime" deal was basically a joke so I can't imagine that having much effect).

BTW, black lines on realistic assets are bad style. The promo render has even thicker lines, I have no idea what they were thinking.

In all honesty, that texture for the tank looks pretty horrid. The model and the treads are the only things that do any good for it.

Doesn't matter much because it looks decent with a normal and specular map.

SupCom is a lot messier than that. Half of the crap does not work right nor does it look any good up close at all.

True, but still, that is more or less relying on the engine more than their own skills... Kind of disappointing.

Hmm... why is it that I've never seen the rocket launcher on the pred ingame? Is it just hidden, or some SP upgrade I didn't know of?