Extreme framerate drop with newly modelled vehicle
by Martin Schultz · in Artist Corner · 01/11/2005 (2:05 am) · 8 replies
Hi,
to learn how to bring some art in my game on my own (as I'm usually a programmer) I followed all the tutorials out there, bought the bravetree vehicle example and tried now on my own to create a vehicle model.
So far everything worked fine. I got the hierarchy set up correctly, exported the model and it looks fine in the show tool plus in the show tool pro. As soon as the model is in the game itself, the framerate drops from about 50 to 5 fps and I have no clue why.
Maybe someone can point me in the right direction what went wrong with my model (using Max 5). The only option I unchecked in the exporter was the "reset transformation" option.
Here's the zipped model I created.
In this zipped I acutally replaced my model of a dropship with a simple sphere - but the result is the same. Also the sphere turns down the framerate to 5 fps. The bounding and col box is a little to big in this example but it was made for the ship itself and not for the sphere :-)
Maybe someone could help out.
Thanks in advance,
Martin
P.S. The exporter I used was the one listed on the Torque 4 Artists page for Max 5.
edit = typo
to learn how to bring some art in my game on my own (as I'm usually a programmer) I followed all the tutorials out there, bought the bravetree vehicle example and tried now on my own to create a vehicle model.
So far everything worked fine. I got the hierarchy set up correctly, exported the model and it looks fine in the show tool plus in the show tool pro. As soon as the model is in the game itself, the framerate drops from about 50 to 5 fps and I have no clue why.
Maybe someone can point me in the right direction what went wrong with my model (using Max 5). The only option I unchecked in the exporter was the "reset transformation" option.
Here's the zipped model I created.
In this zipped I acutally replaced my model of a dropship with a simple sphere - but the result is the same. Also the sphere turns down the framerate to 5 fps. The bounding and col box is a little to big in this example but it was made for the ship itself and not for the sphere :-)
Maybe someone could help out.
Thanks in advance,
Martin
P.S. The exporter I used was the one listed on the Torque 4 Artists page for Max 5.
edit = typo
#2
ah, see what you mean - I have to explain a bit more about it. :-)
The model of the dropship (now represented by a sphere for the moment) is the art replacement for a dummy model I already created some time ago of a flying vehicle (so called Scout Flyer). My intention was now to replace my own dummy art Scout Flyer with this Dropship in the game. The dropship starts off right in the air at game start and flies from waypoint to waypoint. So it never actually starts at ground level or something like this.
Funny is that the dummy art vehicle (Scout) works like a charme. On game start the dummy art is created and then flying ai controlled through the level. Once I replace it by the real dropship art, framerate drops.
But you brought me on something - I'm going to check this evening the collision handler - maybe there's something colliding always with my new model, since the scale of the new model is much larger then the old dummy art vehicle.
I'll be back this evening with news about the collision.
Martin
01/11/2005 (5:04 am)
Hi Matt,ah, see what you mean - I have to explain a bit more about it. :-)
The model of the dropship (now represented by a sphere for the moment) is the art replacement for a dummy model I already created some time ago of a flying vehicle (so called Scout Flyer). My intention was now to replace my own dummy art Scout Flyer with this Dropship in the game. The dropship starts off right in the air at game start and flies from waypoint to waypoint. So it never actually starts at ground level or something like this.
Funny is that the dummy art vehicle (Scout) works like a charme. On game start the dummy art is created and then flying ai controlled through the level. Once I replace it by the real dropship art, framerate drops.
But you brought me on something - I'm going to check this evening the collision handler - maybe there's something colliding always with my new model, since the scale of the new model is much larger then the old dummy art vehicle.
I'll be back this evening with news about the collision.
Martin
#3
Regards,
Martin
01/11/2005 (12:58 pm)
Uuh, I got it working. I'm not 100% sure, but I think I had several problems at once. One issue was that I used concave polygons in my mesh. The second thing was that two dummy markers were linked wrong. Additionally most of the pivot points rotations of the objects were wrong. Regards,
Martin
#4
01/11/2005 (6:42 pm)
The larger the collision shape the more it will hinder performance because the engine needs to check against it more with tests. As such you should try using a smaller collision shape and multiple collision nodes (you have 8 you can use).
#6
Thanks for your help guys!
Martin :-)
01/11/2005 (9:44 pm)
I agree with Matt. As far as I know there's only one collision shape allowed for vehicles (just read it somewhere in the docs a few days ago). Thanks for your help guys!
Martin :-)
#7
01/12/2005 (7:52 am)
If you were referring to L Foster's post, note that he said multiple collision nodes. There is a big difference between the 1 collision shape, and how that shape is defined by the collision nodes.
#8
Matt
01/12/2005 (12:36 pm)
Either way doesn't matter. If you have no shape in vehicle the game crashes. If you have to many shapes or nodes in it , it crashes just as well. You gotta have 1 node and one shape..Matt
Torque Owner Matthew Jones
What the thing do when you load it in game, (besides drop FPS is it sitting on the ground or flying ..).. Is scaled correctly, could be anything.
I would start sdjusting the script if haven't already. The shape and the node don't look bad and export right away, load in the showtool fine..
Matt