As you may know, many of us from the community (including MTS2's own Whitefolks) met with Maxis this week. The art director gave us their standards for performance that they use in modeling new meshes:

1- 800 vertices per tile maximum. (If you've got a two tile table that gives you 1600 to work with and so on).

2- Don't waste texture space. Keep the size of the texture as small as possible -- test it at the smaller texture sizes, if it looks the same with a 64x64 image, don't use a 512x512 one.

3- Keep your models nice and even -- the lighting system stretches the light on a per polygon basis, so don't have stray skinny polygons stretching out to infinity.

4- Take the time to shadow your textures, the game won't do it for you.

Good advice there - most of it is generally good advice for all 3D game modeling.

X.

Did they mention any absolute sizes? Right now, I think the largest texture I've seen was 1024. That suggests to me that we're limited to 2 linked object meshes each using a 1024 UV texture. Any chance of a confirm or a deny on this? Someone modelling a Colossus of Rhodes for their front yard might get quite a bit of pixellation with a 1024 map upon zooming in...

The art department said anything that's a power of two --- but SimPE and the game performance actually handling that might be beyond their expertise.

I'd like to know the exact size, in units, of one in-game tile. X, Y and Z. Did they say anything about this, or does anyone else know?

wow.. i did not know that you people met with them.. =O

Thanks, Brianna.

To the best of my abilities, I believe a tile is 1.2 'vertex units' wide. I also think that 1.0 vertex units are 1 meter, so that makes a tile about 4 ft. on a side, and ceilings about 9 ft high.
Since most objects sit centered on a tile, the coordinates to fill a tile range from +0.6 to -0.6 for the width and depth (X and either Y or Z depending on 3D editor).
<* Wes *>

Great! Thanks, Wes.

But looking at the objects and how many tiles they are, I've always thought of a tile as more like 3ft sides. Otherwise the beds would be 9ft long and kitchen counters 3ft deep. A door just fits one tile, and they're about 3ft including their frames

I have looked at many objects since 800 verts is on the low side for some of the detail we see in the game. It does not seem that Maxis is holding too well to these restrictions - counting tiles in both axises:

3 tile sofavalue total 6731 Verts
2 tile loveseatexpnesivecamelback total 8297 Verts
2 tile changing table total 2034 Verts

I think the vert count is a bad way of measuring how much an object will effect the game anyway. As though the way the game needs the information in a gmdc file doesn`t allow vertices,normals and uv entries to be reused (by different faces) as much as most other formats do (like obj files), they still do allow some reuse. So to me the number of faces seems a better measure of how much effect a object will have on the game speed.

But I have seen people making objects with way too many vertices and faces(one object someone reported problems with, had other 50000 vertices), so it`s good to have at least some type of guidelines.

Also I would like to add that when making a object people should try to keep down the number of seperate meshes/groups they use, while I haven`t looked at all maxis objects, I can`t remember seeing any which have more than about 6 or 7 meshes/groups in one gmdc file. Remember that each mesh needs a MATD file and texture files to go with it. I believe that The more meshes there are in a gmdc file , the harder it makes recolouring and might increase the chance of that gmdc file conflicting with something else. So I think having 20+ meshes in one gmdc (like somepeople are doing) is way too many.

Yes, you are right, Maxis doesn't adhere to their own recommendations, but this doesn't mean the recommendations should simply be thrown out and anything goes.

I think a good way to go is to look at the number of triangles (polycount, or whatever your 3d editor calls it) of the maxis object you have cloned, and try your very best to stay close to that.

I'm afraid people with high-end 3d editor and experience at using them to make detailed photo-realistic renders are used to modeling every tiny detail, and then simply coloring them a solid color and letting the render take care of it. That is a perfectly valid way to do it, for rendering.

For a game mesh, just the opposite is true. The rule of thumb is to put as much of the detail as you can on the texture, and keep the mesh as simple as possible.

We all need to remember this is a game, which means everything must be "rendered" 60 times each second, or more.

If 3d max takes a few seconds to render a scene, you'd hardly notice.

But if the game is overloaded and can only render the scene 30 times each second, it will seem like you are playing in slow-motion.

Just because your mesh works fine in your own game on your 3ghz processor with the latest state-of-the art video card, don't forget not everyone has such a system. And also there will be many more objects on the lot besides yours, and if everyone is making high-poly meshes there is going to be major slowdowns in people's game.

I'm not trying to spoil anyone's fun, nor stifle your creativity, but if you really feel you must make a high-poly mesh please at least say so clearly with the download, and warn people that it might slow their game down.

It might be a good idea to require new objects to have a technical list. Number of textures and sizes, vertices/face count, number of seperate models, etc...

At least it would cause people to be more aware of these things.

I have seen simple models have 10,000+ vertices. You would never know by looking.

My problem with these 'recomendations' is that they are superficial enough to be suprious. "okay give the user a quick rule of thumb" and you get something off the wall "max limit" that will cause issues for the 3d hobbist.

What they have done by suggesting these limits is set a really bad precident of having the modeler limit their vision to a tile instead of the whole world. An object that would be used often and multiple times would be the one you want to limit verts to a minimum amount while an object that might only appear once or twice in the lot woul not need anywhere need the limiting factor proscribed. This is exactly how Maxis apparently has done this, and though it's a more complex way to decide where you will limit your object they should be saying this not handing out a "cookie cutter" answer.

For example: A kitchen counter or a window or door, that is used multiple time in a lot should be built way under that limit since you know it will be used multiple times but if you build an object that only really has the purpose of being in the lot one (a fancy bed) could very well go over this 'maxis limit'. This is how modelers should be approaching 'limits' for their items.

You are right, rentechd, and that's probably how Maxis looks at it. I think the reason they bothered to say anything is because most new modelers don't even think about how many vertices they are using. You and a few others realize the issue, others need a reminder - and something to shoot for.

What's wierd is on my system, with graphics turned to the max, all included neighborhoods and houses that I've visited so far give me good to great framerates, EXCEPT for the Goth house. In the center of the house, the framerate slows to a chunk... chunk... chunk... speed. Heh, I was trying to play that neighborhood 'straight', but there is a 'no jealousy' hack somewhere in my downloads that I cant find yet. I finally got Cassandra to break up with Don and she married Derek? Dreamer and brought her whole household over. Now I'm going to tear the Goth house apart and try to find if it is a single object that is causing the slowdown problem. In any event, it will get remodelled.

Maybe someone could go through a Maxis mansion-type house and characterize the polygon density throughout. The point of keeping it to 800 max per tile may be that there is another max to keep in mind: the max acceptable polys per 10 or 20 square tiles (100 or 400 tile areas).

Also, I assume that 800 is a target per tile for a given model. So if you have a coffee table with an object on top of it, then that would be a total in-game density of 1600 polys max on that tile. You could have a desk against a wall, with a computer on it, a chair snugged up to the desk, and a fancy mirror on the wall behind the computer (or a window). Not counting the chair, that's 2400 polys. So if something is stackable, and/or a sim can sit or lay on or in it, then you would want to be more careful to stay at or below a pretty conservative number. If it is an object that excludes the possibility of a sim or other object being placed on the same tile, then it seems that you could go double or triple the limit.

P.S. ...and then you can always put a light fixture above it all...

Jaycephus; about the jealosy issue,

have you got any numbered files in your folders at all, particularly one named 58885343487e3fcd61040f65a84a0e00.package

This seems to be a Jealousy hack that Cleaninstaller nor HackScanner recognice.

I'll check.

It's funny, but that seems to be a familiar number. Heh, heh. Actually the 5888 part is familiar because of the triple 8's, and the hash or whatever numbers are usually unique in the first four digits. I may have already found this package. In my attempt to clean the jealousy hack out, I started looking at all the packages in SimPE, starting with the smallest files, since the original hack was a small file. I've only gotten up to the 11 or 12 byte files, but I did find a package with jealousy BHAVs that was not detected in Clean Installer. Unfortunately, there must be another one. Another problem I had with Clean Installer was that there were packages that caused it to stop processing, so it wouldn't build a complete list. I would have to pull the 'bad' package out temporarily and restart Clean Installer. After pulling several packages out of the download directory, I finally got a complete list.

Thanks, Tasha.

I based my 'guesstimate' on the height of the adult characters. The adult female is around 1.6 'units' high, the male about 1.8. That makes for 5' 4" or so females and 6' or so tall males.
At 1 meter per unit, then, a tile is 1.2 meters, or 3' 10" or so on a side. Give or take, as Maxis didn't give us a ruler.
Ceilings are almost 3.0, so 9' for them, which is common in newer dwellings.
If the bed doesn't fill all the tile, it would be smaller than 3 tiles would dictate.
<* Wes *>

I'm not following how you work out the relationship between the "units" and the tile. Why do you say a tile is 1.2 units per side?

Anyway, 1.2 metres is 4ft. A sims bed is about 2 and a quarter tiles long, which would make it 9ft by your reckoning. If you go by mine - and I'm willing to compromise and call a tile 1metre instead of 3ft, then the bed is still a little over-large but the people are spot on, at 1.6m and 1.8m which are normal heights for adult humans.

Also if the ceilings are 3 tiles high and a tile is 1.2m, then the ceilings would be 12ft high, not 9ft

My problem with this discussion, or at least part of it, is that I would really like to have a maximum face count for body meshes, but 800 is totally unattainable. I don't know much about the sims, I didn't have anything to do with the sims 1 modding, and just started with the sims2, but I know a little bit about modeling in general, and I know I can't make an adequate figure with 800 polygons. So I guess my question is - what is a good general poly count for body/clothing meshes? And if you say anything like 800, then I'm sorry but I'm not going to be able to take you seriously.

Brasstex

Btw, I've successfully had 8 sims, all at around 4000 polys, dance together in a fully furnished living room (home), with no slowdown. Also, my pc specs are on the lower end of things compared to current standards.

As I said before I don`t think vertice count is a good way to tell what effect a object will have, as this can vary depending on what file was used to import the mesh from (and also on what program was used to create the mesh) , as for example the smd file needs each vertice used by a face to be a seperate entry in the file (it doesn`t support vertice reuse at all).

So taking a standard body mesh from the game(picked at random). in the original gmdc file it has 1643 vertices, and 2244 faces(so some of those vertices entries are used by more than one face). Now as I said the smd doesn`t allow vertice reuse, so after this mesh has been exported out as a smd file and reimported it would now have 6732 vertice but still 2244 faces, as each vertice for each face would need to be a seperate vertice in the list (as the mesh tool doesn`t try to recombine the vertices which are the same).

There is a smilar thing when importing obj files, as the obj format allows much more use of vertice reuse than the gmdc format does, so the number of vertice entries in the gmdc created from a obj file could be more than the number of vertice entries in the obj file.

The face count is much more important.

Hi, Miche, Thanks for the reply. Do you know off hand which maxis Body mesh has the highest face count? Or if not, which would you suggest I look at? The thing that is funny to me, is that maxis would present info to us in such a way, that it is not that helpful. Oh, well, I guess we'll figure it out, but I don't want to spoil anyone's game or slow it down by creating too "expensive" a mesh, so I really would like to nail down some upper limits.

Thanks,

Brasstex

Did they also happen to give an idea of the numbers of additional objects allowed in the game or at least a total megabyte limit of items?
I know that I have already found that there are limits by the simple expedience of having colors disappear, or even the Maxis items show as 'recolors' with the star. Remove some of the items from that catagory and all returns back to normal, which DOES indicate a limit, apparently.

I think many would be interested to know and it may also affect modelers as they create new items. Smaller items would allow for more items for users...

Thanks
Gillian