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Polysoup - Level of Detail

by Surge · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 09/03/2008 (12:31 pm) · 1 replies

Polysoup - Level of Detail -

I am in the midst of generating a DTS Building in 3ds Max using Polysoup.

I have quite a nice structure 500m long by 300m wide
It is three levels high each level being approx 25m high.
There are 15-20 openings in the surrounding walls for
Door ways. And Trim inside and outside of each of the door ways.

There are glass walls on the inside of the building with openings
A trim on each of them as well.

There 15 or more posts to hold up the inside walkways
I have balconies , and outside walk ways. It has a lot of detail to it.

The walls of three Stories are broken into 105 pieces.
The floor into 4 pieces. For each opening I have two pieces of trim which is 40 pieces.
ETC,ETC...lots of pieces!

I have setup MULTI RES modifiers for all pieces, and can export the shape
Without problems to a DTS.

It imports in the game - No problems

Before I setup the LOD I got 17FPS

With LOD I Get Approx 60-70FPS using poly soup. Which I find amazingly fast.
I can look through any of the glass windows and see the entire building
Rendered. Its Great!

----------------
Q U E S T I O N !
----------------

A) When I import the DTS building is TGEA seeing the DTS as one shape?

B)Does TGEA access all those LOD's I have setup at the same time?

For example if I have LOD'S 128,64,32,12,2 and it chooses 64
Does it choose 64 for each piece in my building.

C)Would the Engine speed up even faster if I imported each piece as separated DTS Shapes, so that LOD was being handled separately for each piece?

For example 1 wall that was 105 pieces now becomes 105 DTS piece
Imported separately?

D) If I did separate all the Shapes How would I bring them into the
Engine so they all fit together the same as I see in 3ds Max?

Thanks!
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Torque Owner Surge
MDNAMEDIA
#1
09/09/2008 (9:38 am)
From What I can Tell.

A) Yes TGEA Sees the DTS Building as one Shape.
So when it accesses the LOD it does it for Every Piece in the Structure at the same time.

I can tell by running through my building a watching a subtle LOD
change in all the structures at the same time.

B) Yes same as A

C) Ive broken up the building into 50 odd size pieces and notice a minor increase
of 10 FPS when viewing the entire structure. But notice the biggest increase
as I run from end to end, Ive hit upwards of 90 Frames Per Second in
some spots which is pretty amazing

D) Simple Answer. I Keep the same bounds box for every Piece, and Export each one separately.
In the world editor hit f11, then f4 and without moving my character click on each piece
one at a time. The pieces keep their coordinates and end up in the same positions relative to where the
first piece imports.

-----------------------------
N E W Q U E S T I O N !
-----------------------------

A) Since DTS shapes are being exported as walls and hallways, using Polysoup as collision,
what would be the Proper LOD setup for Long Continuous Walls?.
Lets say this is a standard 128,64,32,2. Now that the walls at 400 or more pixels
at anytime would I now need to rewrite the LOD to say something like 500,400,300,50

B) What are the limits to the LOD Naming process. For example If a wall contains 100 pieces and
it was called Wall01_ww_128 thru to Wall100_ww_128 will the naming convention break down?
When I break an Object like a wall down with an Explode Macro-script I am left with
Object1 thru to 100. It becomes tedious to try and rename all those pieces. I am using the
renaming tool in Max to do it in seconds. What are the naming limits?

C) How many LODS can you have in a DTS?

D) Since we are moving towards the use of polysoup collision wouldnt it make more sense that
the Game engine see DTS shapes as all the individual pieces that make them up. This way as you
moved through a structure the LOD for all pieces would change individually without the need to
export them as pieces.