Kid - Abbey V1.11

[embx61]

Every square/rectangle you see on the walls in the picture are 2 polygons.

The modeler of those houses did not use pro Boolean but build a plane wall with a bunch of edge connect lines to cut out the windows.
That is fine as long as you move the vertices and weld them, or even better use edge connect in a more economic way, what was not done here.

So I selected only the 4 walls and the poly count is 317 for 4 simple plane walls. If they had a double wall it would have been 634 polygons.

I agree that double walls not have to add much if you know how to model them but CAN add a lot if modelled like in the picture by overuse of edge connect lines.

I made quickly the same plane wall with 10 windows cut out  and I end up with only 14 faces = 28 Polygons.

[Gatherer]

My 2 cents worth of thinking:

Something that's been bothering me for a while is the sheer number of windows on many houses in many mods. Let's take Red's pic as an example.



If we assume or pretend that the interiors are divided into many separate rooms how many windows should there really be? IMO the front should stay as it is while the sides and the back should only have 2 windows each per floor.

My country was once part of Austria-Hungary and for some time back then the number of windows was taxed. The more windows the higher the tax.

[RedKetchup]

if it would be an apartment house... maybe it is a 4x 3 1/2 room ?

but it is an abbey, no ? if they abbey count 34 brothers... should have 34 windows ^^

[kid1293]

Cell division?

[brads3]

i'm not a modder but can the window be made as part of the wall somehow to use less poly? or maybe just the frames and then add the glass?  or instead of making 4 sides to picture frame the window,make it 1 piece and remove the middle where the glass goes? trying to think outside the box.

[embx61]

Yes, that is possible but you have to use a texture that paint all the windows on the walls where they go on the mesh.
Not easy to do but also it will look all very flat.

Having a building using 2K to 3K poly is fine.
The engine handles it fairly well.

It is crops, trees, where we modders have to be careful with as many of those are placed/spawned on a map.

10 buildings placed a 2K each is 20K poly's . 1000 trees a 150 poly each is 150K poly's.

[kid1293]

10 buildings placed a 2K each is 20K poly's . 1000 trees a 150 poly each is 150K poly's.

Yes, I have learned that. That's why I only put my trees as deco. (and the thing that they never fall) 

But why limit ourselves to what is good from the worst scenario? I build houses that 2-3000 polys
or more and I am not ashamed.

[Paeng]

10 buildings placed a 2K each is 20K poly's . 1000 trees a 150 poly each is 150K poly's.

Yeah, a key wisdom... 

I also been wondering - how much impact does all the swaying in the wind have? I mean it's cool when tall trees sway (and fall), but do we really need that for every tiny grass or flower or whatnot?

It seems to cause a lot of flickering and jittering in the general scene, worse when scrolling...

Similar for the now widespread use of AO - many building seem to come to a ghostly life with it, something like huge tribes of ants running up and down a building, again causing lots of flickering.

Not complaining, just wondering if we have not yet gotten the right measure where all these features truely add to a model / scene or are just bogging down general performance... thoughts?

[kid1293]

Hi!
AO-mapping is integrated and enabled by default in every model.
I don't know how it can be disabled.
And for the ants, yes I have seen them and it's a bit annoying. But the
level of detail is worth it I think. I can not think a game without AO now.


Using billboard or foliage material can maybe degrade performance but
they are there as a compromise. Billboards are actually 2 dimensional
and turn towards the camera. That is huge gain when modelling trees.
You dont have cover every angle when you make them.


Again the swaying is integrated in the code. The only way to disable it
is to omit the third UV-map, but I think the calculations goes on anyhow.
Might as well use them.


All in all we could go on playing without AO or moving fauna if we never
zoom in. Detail level can be achieved by manipulating the textures.
Making plants more frail gives them a more 'airy' appearance and then you
maybe don't need movement.   ?


We can be glad the game does not support bump/reflection maps.

[grammycat]

Paeng-I agree as the flickering drives me nuts!  I have Meinere's Disease which affects the inner ear thus causing extreme motion sickness.  I build all my towns without turning the map around, yet the flickering was really getting to me.  I just don't use mods that have flickering and turn off reflections in options.  That said-I am content with however the creator wants to make their mod.  I certainly can't create, so I'm dependent upon the generosity of our modders.

[RedKetchup]

i certainly dont understand by what you guys mean by "flickering ants"
when i try to figure out, i only can think about the bad shadow engine.

[embx61]

The flickering is also in Vanilla by scrolling and zooming.

It is a engine thing is my guess as I not see this behavior in other games and wonder if Luke can do something about it.
But I guess it will be too much work for him so we just have to deal with it.

I agree with so many mods added it has become some worse but beauty comes with a price.

[embx61]

I noticed that sometimes I see some black like it is crawling over some roofs.

It looks like the textures are moving. I redid once a whole roof from scratch as I thought it was my error and it still did not make a difference so gave up on it.
Indeed probably some bad shadow engine code somewhere.

It is a engine thing so nothing us modders can do about.
On some buildings it is worse then others I noticed probably depending on the angle of the roof.
I have seen it on some of the Vanilla buildings too, but way less though.

By scrolling and zooming, even in Vanilla, the game always flickers for a few seconds before coming to a stand still.

[Paeng]

Thanks for all the explanations 

By scrolling and zooming, even in Vanilla, the game always flickers for a few seconds

Right... though it is very much pronounced lately... but as you said, beauty has a price, and I guess the more mods we load, the higher the price 

causing extreme motion sickness

Sorry to hear that it affects you so badly...     I know that motion sickness thing, I get that when uprights become extremely slanted and thereby kinda change the perspective (I forgot the proper game term for it, something to do with zooming or panning)...

[RedKetchup]

i personally dont have a motion sickness but i have a kind of vertigo sickness lol
everytime my toon was about falling from a mountain in world of warcraft or intentionally jumping down.... my heart was really stopping or losing counciousness ^^
even if it is just a game lol