So... just how high can the polycount go?

[giftheck]

As some of you might be aware, if you've seen my posts in Glamour Skins, I have been testing out ports of the DICE SWBF models to SWBFII. So far, the highest-poly model I have got in the game consists of 53,941 triangles (Magma Trooper, if you want to know) and the game has suffered absolutely no drop in framerate or model dropouts to lowres. It got me wondering: just how far does the game allow you to go when it comes to the poly count?

[thelegend]

I am not an expert at this but I believe the poly limit *can* be exceeded. Maybe the limit are for Zero Editor Placement only but not for what the game can take. For Tatooine At War I used a bunch of Free Radical's Models. I didn't reduce the poly count too much. I always thought that the game was gonna crash. But it wasn't. Some Models had about 30.000 tris (Vehicles, Units). In-Game everything was running fine but if I placed them in Zero Editor...Goodbye.

[giftheck]

So the trick would be to use low-poly for Zero Editor then once you are done point the ODFs to use high-poly models.

[TheMastermindOfMaom]

[useless]

[thelegend]

So the trick would be to use low-poly for Zero Editor then once you are done point the ODFs to use high-poly models.

Sure. I didn't try that before but it should work. Have a look at this: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=31912
Technically you could also load models using 4K textures (If your low poly model for ZE has a lower texture resolution applied).

[Teancum]

If only rendering capabilities kept up with polygon counts. At this point such high-poly goodness is largely wasted.

[jedimoose32]

I just tried to use ZE Tools to export a model with 42,000 tris. I let it run for about 15 minutes before I decided it was probably stuck. I have a fairly high end machine. Should I have waited longer? It seems to be possible to do more polys than what I have, based on what you are saying, ggctuk.

[thelegend]

42K is a really high number. I would go down by half and let it be like it is.

Edit: Another thing I should mention is: If there are many high poly models then low poly models (Like Ammo/Health droids, detonation packs or bacta tanks will begin to flicker. This happened to an old map I made. I had too many high poly models placed (Same Object) and small props began flickering.
Solution: Keep the Poly Count low but not too low. Save as much space as possible and use very low meshes for Lowrez. Use primitives as Shadowvolume and don't overdo collisions.

[bonystyle]

Or can just highpoly be used? I think we shall somehow go over BF:EA polycount on large maps , so flickering objects will be a problem :0

[Teancum]

This is all very interesting, but let's remember that current-gen high poly models won't be noticeable in-game. Anything above around ~30k wouldn't matter because all of the details that show that many polygons off, such as specular and bumpmapping, are not very good in SWBF1/SWBF2. Yes, it has them, but they're quite terrible. It's one thing to have fun experimenting, but I hope nobody is getting delusions of grandeur here. Let's remember that if the whole map were filled with 30k poly models there WOULD be slowdown. There's a good chance of things crashing as well, since at some point you're going to hit hard-coded safety limits within the game engine itself. And also remember the community has been kept alive in some small part given that this still runs great on older machines. Not everyone has quad core CPUs and whatnot.

[bonystyle]

Lol, we are exactly aiming at 30k polys. And 8k textures ._. Fake console graphics downgrade will help. We have like 5 LODs all the way down to 250 polys and 64x64 textures. Thelegend told me there is a file responsible for rendering, might be changing something there will improve normal and specular maps quality?

[thelegend]

Lol, we are exactly aiming at 30k polys. And 8k textures ._. Fake console graphics downgrade will help. We have like 5 LODs all the way down to 250 polys and 64x64 textures. Thelegend told me there is a file responsible for rendering, might be changing something there will improve normal and specular maps quality?

Well, I told you that the .sky file contains some interesting things in rendering (View Distance, Draw Distance, Detail Range, Fog Range and more). Some .fx
files contain some good things too.
8K textures don't crash the game but creates immensely large files. Once I made a texture using a 8192x8192 texture. The .tga file was quit about 100Mb*s in file size. The munged file had a much larger file size. I'd recommend using as less 4K textures as possible. I think you are not going to have 30 textures for each map. So try using 2-4K textures only. 8K works but it's not worth the file size at all.

[TheMastermindOfMaom]

Just a question,how could you port these to BF2? (FRD models). I can't find a porting tutorial for any SW game.

Anyone?

[thelegend]

Just a question,how could you port these to BF2? (FRD models). I can't find a porting tutorial for any SW game.

Anyone?

Porting any Objects to battlefront II always works through one basic way: Get the Object file, import and export it to swbf2 .msh files. That's all. You just need the proper converters and a basic knowledge of how to create custom Objects, Characters and Vehicles (Collisions, _lowrez, sv_, enveloping, weight editing, "maybe" animation). Then it's important to make sure all textures have the same size, name and settings (RLE turned off). Also make sure all UV's are mapped correctly.

[Teancum]

Just a question,how could you port these to BF2? (FRD models). I can't find a porting tutorial for any SW game.

Anyone?

Per our rules, don't. I'm sure this was just for research. Actually porting and releasing them would be a red flag for Disney, EA, and DICE.

[bonystyle]

However such changes as retopology (from 30k to 10k for example, who needs 30k in an 2005 game ... *irony intensifies*) and texture editing (change at least 1 pixel and do some basic color correction, as I know textures in BF EA are really dark so just increasing their brightness will do) will drive the copyright strikes away.

[Teancum]

Doesn't matter. Don't do it. I'm writing up a new rule as we speak. We play nice with Disney/Lucas/EA.

***EDIT***

DO NOT RELEASE (OR REQUEST) ANYTHING PORTED FROM THE NEW STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT!

See this link: http://www.gametoast.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=31956

[TheMastermindOfMaom]

Finally,the no ports rule!

GT needed it.

Also:

Just a question,how could you port these to BF2? (FRD models). I can't find a porting tutorial for any SW game.

Anyone?

Per our rules, don't. I'm sure this was just for research. Actually porting and releasing them would be a red flag for Disney, EA, and DICE.

Never said about EA's SWBF. I said about FRD's SWBFIII.

[bonystyle]

Too bad, looks like thelegend has to remake his Tatooine at War map now

[TheMastermindOfMaom]

If you read the rules post it says that FRD SWBF3 models/CWA models are allowed. :p