#14
13th Apr 2005 at 12:58 AM
Last edited by Motoki : 13th Apr 2005 at
1:03 AM.
Hi Nikki, thank you for taking the time to make an object and share it with us.
Now before I comment, I want to preface my comments and say please don't be discouraged or take what I am about to say in the wrong way. I'm just trying to help and I think you've done a fantastic job for your very first mesh. Trust me you don't even want to see my first mesh.
I know using these 3D programs is not so simple but you do seem to have picked up the basics of using them pretty quickly.
Now I did a polygon count on your mesh and it came out to over 13,000 polygons. Just to give a point of reference, Maxis reccomends user made meshes in general not be much over 800 polygons. And while Maxis' number is rather low and they don't always stick it themselves, 13,000 is awfully high for a small decorative item.
Polygons are the shapes that make up a mesh. They're the areas between the (vertex) points. In general, the higher polygon count a mesh has, the more detail it contains. This is usually okay for people wanting to do still picture 3D renders, but in games the video card is constantly redrawing and re-rendering the objects and your object gets combined with a lot of others, so having too many polygons has the potential to slow your game down, so it's best when modding for gaming to try to make your meshes as low polygon as you can get away with while still maintaining the basic shape and look you want.
If you are using Milkshape, to check the polygon count go to the top menu and click on tools, then from the drop down menu choose "Show Model Statistics". A box will come up with information. The line that reads "triangles" will have a number after it. While you don't necessary have to stick to Maxis' reccomendation of 800 polygons, you probably should try to keep it under 2,000-3,000 or even less if you can manage it. Particularly if it's a smallish item that has the potential to be used multiple times in a house.
You can also roughly tell if a mesh is high polygon just by eyeballing it in your 3D editor. The areas where there are few points and they are spread out from each other and you can easily see the skeleton of the mesh are generally low polygon while areas where there's lots of points close together in one areas so much so that you almost see solid white rather than the individual dots are generally high polygon areas.
I posted a picture of your mesh and circled the problem area. The can and the bottle are fine and quite low polygon objects, but it's the brush that's high polygon. The main problem area are the bristles (which I circled in the picture, see how there's so many points and it's so densely packed that it's almost solid white?) and to a lesser extent the circles on the handle could be optimized too.
What you might want to do is instead of have individual bristles meshed out is to make one large wide and short cylinder for the bristles and then put a texture along the sides and another one on the top that has a picture of bristles with spaces in betweem on the texture image. The object is pretty small and most people probably are not going to get in close enough to notice that kind of detail anyway.
Once again I think you've done a great job, don't be discouraged it's a constant learning process, there's still PLENTY that I don't know but I'm always learning. Keep at it and keep up the good work and thanks again for your generousity to make and share something with us.