Poly soup..

#1 Its a far more accurate collision system, based on the geometry of a shape rather than the bounding box. Although its better is some respects, its totally inappropriate is other situations.

#2 Thank you kindly. A quick and to the point explanation.

From my own surmising i had thought it was the placement of invisible bsp geometry ingame, with dts models in front for visuals...

#3 Polysoup is more than collision. It is the use of geometry without the convex limitations. Polysoup collision is usually termed mesh collision, in which the actual mesh is used for the collision--or more often, a simplified mesh. A game such as Final Fantasy X may use polysoup modeling, but since it does not need accurate collisions, often will use a simplified collision mesh. This allows the engine to make cheap collision checks and allows for highly detailed meshes. Games such as Dynasty Warriors and Drakengard follow a similar approach since they do not require accurate collisions for most of the level geometry (though they have much higher requirements for bodily collisions than many games).

One of the problems with polysoup levels is that the engine, the programmers and artists, need to figure out a way to occlude unseen areas.

#4 Basically it seems 95% of all games that are being made today use polly soup? I read that Torque X will allow Polly Soup? That would mean direct import from modelers such as 3dmax / Maya??????? I am so tired of having to deal with the restrictiveness of BSP editors!!!! True you have your pros and cons with ether or... but it seems to me that specially with today's graphic cards polly soup should be the way to go!

Imagine when an artist (making an indie game) can finally use a high end modeler to make EVERY part of a level!! Without having to deal with Quark or Constructor...or whatever...or whatever....ONLY then, will I waste my time with TGE...

#5

Quote:Basically it seems 95% of all games that are being made today use polly soup?

Since many engines are built from the ground up, especially in the console world, then yes. It also brings load times and custom culling into extreme focus for the engine developers.

But for engines like Unreal or Source, BSP is still the norm...as it is for most FPS systems.

If you consider TGE a waste of time, then pick up something like Beyond Virtual. It will allow you to use your meshes. There are some huge performance hits for doing so, and you will have to modify your workflow for culling before you grind your fps into the floor. But you can up your quality by working with long load-times between areas. A large number of console games do this all the time. PC games do as well, especially in the adventure gaming arena. Luckily on the PC, you have a large pool of memory to pull from.

#6 Okay, I'm being a little dim here on Boxing day (recovering from yesterdays celebrations no doubt) but what are the advantages?

How does this make for a better game?

Is it simply no convex geometry limitations/restrictions?

Merry Christmas and save holidays all :)

#7 For interiors, you've got to use a brush based editor. It's a very different workflow than from conventional modeling programs, and many simply don't like it. Add on top of that the current editors leave much room for improvements, makes brush based modeling a pain when compared to using 3DStudio Max, or Maya. However, with poly soup collision, also comes problems. It's typically considerably slower, but none-the-less, has it's uses. Anyone here that has TSE, can check this out:

http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/8863/11953 - Ben Garney has done some work on 3DS poly soup collision.