Polysoup (What is it)

#1 1. Actual plane/faces/tris collision on a DTS - what you see is what the collision mesh is.
2. Yep, I'd say so.
3. Probably.
4. Depends, lots of high tris models using polysoup means lots of extra collision work for the processor.

#2 If you own tge (without tgea) there is a working polysoup mod for it that works great and would give you a really good idea how well it works.

#3 Tyler,

Here is a link to poly soup in action in TGE

-Todd
www.shapesandlines.com

#4 Thanks, I looked at that earlier.

Anyway, so let me get this straight:

1. The visible mesh also acts as a collision mesh?
2. It can do well on high-performance games.
3. It can handle online games.
4. It slows down the game?

#5 1: Pretty much.
2: Depends on what you define as a high performance game.
3: Yes - it's Torque with award winning network code.
4: Yes - but varies due to complexity of the model.

#6 Does this mean that you don't need to make difs anymore?

#7 You dont HAVE to use difs..but polysoup still does not account for portalling which is why DIF is awesome. Also i hear there is some funkiness going on when you put to many polysoup items close together.

#8 P.s. if you really hate making difs then just make your items in 3ds max or whatever program, export them as DTS then import them into constructor and export them again as a dif...

#9 Thanks, I will remember that when TGEA goes to Mac.

Also, I tried that trick with the .dif things, but I thought that some side effects may happen, such as:

Collision won't work (although I guess that will be fixed in polysoup).
Portalling won't work
Some items won't load.

Anyway, do you know what would happen if I did that trick?

#10 You cannot use polysoup on a dif object. Only dts. The problem with polysoup is if you have 2 objects touching each other, or if they are quite close. This causes incredible lag in the game. If your objects are scattered around, there is no noticiable lag.

As for using constructor to make a dts into a dif, be careful. Constructor views the dts as a "detail shape".
Things may not turn out as you expect.

#11 Ok, so polysoup is good until there are too many polys in an object.

So here is my next question:

Can polysoup still let you make your own collisione meshes? And if so can they now be concave? Because I would like to have accurate collision on my high-poly models, but they still have concave features.

#12 The only side effect of embedding dts static shapes into Constructor is that they don't recieve dynamic lighting and shadowing.

So far as making your own collision meshes goes - I'm sure you can. In fact I've seen a resource that allowed you to create collision meshes for complicated meshes in order to optimize the polysoup routines.

#13 Take a look at this, it's probably what you're thinking of.

www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=14622

#14 Ok, that is good.

But anyway, I am still wondering. If you make your own collision mesh, can it now be concave? I believe that if polysoup let's it's collision mesh concave, I am guessing you can make it concave yourself.

#15 (non-polysouped) Concave collision meshes will not give full collision. They'll probably stop a player running into them, but they certainly won't stop line-of-sight, raycasts or projectiles. Plus your player can get stuck on them from the overhang.

Better to make multiple collision meshes for one model. Check out the Documentation - Artists link in the drop down menu at the top of the page.

#16 Thanks Steve, that is pretty much my last question on Polysoup, so I think that it might come in handy.