Polysoup collision and Blender exporter
by Lee Latham · in Artist Corner · 04/11/2008 (2:06 pm) · 11 replies
I've been using Milkshape to create my polysoup-only levels for some time now with no major issues. But what I'm finding when using Blender is that my players tend to get "hung" while traversing even a flat surface. I've even taken the shapes I made in Milkshape which work fine for my levels, imported into Blender (via obj) and re-exported and had the issue.
I know this is pretty arcane, but any input would be greatly appreciated, as this is a bit of a showstopper for me with Blender (and Blender is soooooooooo much more powerful!).
Any input would be greatly appreciated!
I know this is pretty arcane, but any input would be greatly appreciated, as this is a bit of a showstopper for me with Blender (and Blender is soooooooooo much more powerful!).
Any input would be greatly appreciated!
#2
Anyway, it was the two-sided thing! As soon as I read that I knew that was likely it, as I'd run into the same effect with meshes which were too close together in the past.
If you're into big environments, I would invite you to check out my game (see my profile). I am deeply interested in scale, and my game reflects this. And the game is 100% polysoup, not a dif in sight :-)
Thanks, Joseph, I appreciate it!
04/11/2008 (5:40 pm)
Awesome tube! 20000 KILOmeters? No sh*t? That's amazing. And I thought I was making some massive environments. But I'm just a lone tawn-tawn compared to your Death Star. What are you doing to do with it?Anyway, it was the two-sided thing! As soon as I read that I knew that was likely it, as I'd run into the same effect with meshes which were too close together in the past.
If you're into big environments, I would invite you to check out my game (see my profile). I am deeply interested in scale, and my game reflects this. And the game is 100% polysoup, not a dif in sight :-)
Thanks, Joseph, I appreciate it!
#4
I realize you probably know all this, just throwing it out there. Or actually was it people using some early Atlas versions that ran into that problem...sorry, wasting your time.
04/11/2008 (6:27 pm)
Far out--what an interesting, if unpleasant problem to have. I thought I'd read that older versions of TGE had that problem pretty bad (no parsec-like distances necessary) but that it had been resolved. And I've noticed that TGEA has often had much older TGE parts integrated into it than one would think.I realize you probably know all this, just throwing it out there. Or actually was it people using some early Atlas versions that ran into that problem...sorry, wasting your time.
#5
also another problem with massive dts objects is lod doesnt work when your walking on an asteroid that is one big dts .. is there any answers to that ?
pic of said massive object ..
08/14/2008 (9:11 pm)
Anyone noticed slow downs when using polysoup on an almost 10000 tri object? i had an object that at first was much higher then 10000 tri .. but due to the dts limit i put it just a bit under and experience very jittery slow downs when running on it and/or viewing it. also another problem with massive dts objects is lod doesnt work when your walking on an asteroid that is one big dts .. is there any answers to that ?
pic of said massive object ..
#7
also what are triangle lists? i know what strips are, and i never actually click on that in the exporter hehe..
i managed to add lod to the mushroom asteroid with no problems so that actually works hehe, also a bit off topic i set my materials up with diffuse as material index 2, bump map as material 1 and glowing/emissive as material 0 ..
i wasnt sure if that made a difference or not with getting glow + normal map specular info to work on it or if just two material index's would be fine.. any ideas?
also *note* i did all this after the above pic was taken
one last thing .. if i cant layer textures in blender.. could i somehow do it in the material editor ? im trying to avoid gigantic textures...
basically what i want to do is have 3 different frequencies of the same tiling texture on stuff like this + a baked in fullrender in blender.
have any ideas about how to go about this other than just baking everything to one texture like im currently doing?
can the material file somehow control tiling frequency and doing multiplying for each texture on each layer?
08/15/2008 (10:48 am)
Do you have any idea how sparse the triangles should be ? if there was a rule of thumb like triangles should be atleast 1 meter in size for things to run ok that would be fine.. btw i would check that link but its for license owners it seems and only the coders on my project own a license..also what are triangle lists? i know what strips are, and i never actually click on that in the exporter hehe..
i managed to add lod to the mushroom asteroid with no problems so that actually works hehe, also a bit off topic i set my materials up with diffuse as material index 2, bump map as material 1 and glowing/emissive as material 0 ..
i wasnt sure if that made a difference or not with getting glow + normal map specular info to work on it or if just two material index's would be fine.. any ideas?
also *note* i did all this after the above pic was taken
one last thing .. if i cant layer textures in blender.. could i somehow do it in the material editor ? im trying to avoid gigantic textures...
basically what i want to do is have 3 different frequencies of the same tiling texture on stuff like this + a baked in fullrender in blender.
have any ideas about how to go about this other than just baking everything to one texture like im currently doing?
can the material file somehow control tiling frequency and doing multiplying for each texture on each layer?
#8
and any plans on releasing the python script :) ive been wanting to test out modular architecture + polysoup and didnt have any good way of precisely aligning dts objects ingame.
08/15/2008 (11:18 am)
One last thing, how does the python script work that you used to construct that massive polysoup object? could it work on arbitrarily cut up meshes? and any plans on releasing the python script :) ive been wanting to test out modular architecture + polysoup and didnt have any good way of precisely aligning dts objects ingame.
#10
@Fleet: As always Joseph is correct about those options, but I can tell you from experience that performance with polysoup collision is highly dependent on the exact nature of your game. There's about a million variables. I can tell you that texture size is not important at all as long as you stay at 1024^2 or less. I have many textures that size in my levels, and as an experiment I yanked all the textures out...and my framerate stayed the same. It's all about the polys.
If you want to check out semi-complete game using the technology, see my profile :). My server's down at the moment, but there are instructions for how to host a game on my forums. On one level I have a 20,000 poly banana plant you can walk around on (produced in Milkshape). Once you get past a certain point, it doesn't seem to matter any more how many polys you throw in there.
08/15/2008 (6:03 pm)
@Joseph: That would be cool. Procedural level creation, anyone?@Fleet: As always Joseph is correct about those options, but I can tell you from experience that performance with polysoup collision is highly dependent on the exact nature of your game. There's about a million variables. I can tell you that texture size is not important at all as long as you stay at 1024^2 or less. I have many textures that size in my levels, and as an experiment I yanked all the textures out...and my framerate stayed the same. It's all about the polys.
If you want to check out semi-complete game using the technology, see my profile :). My server's down at the moment, but there are instructions for how to host a game on my forums. On one level I have a 20,000 poly banana plant you can walk around on (produced in Milkshape). Once you get past a certain point, it doesn't seem to matter any more how many polys you throw in there.
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