Im working on some props for Poser, but I think Im pushing A LOT of polygons. Not that I want to, but I cant think of any other way of getting the smooth, flat edges I need for the objects with increasing the polygon count. In your opinion, what is considered to be 'too many polygons' for a Poser object? Feedback is very welcome.

I think geep had a tutorial here about smoothing and polys. Something about the sharp edges need beveling or something then the rest of the flat plain won't have to be so high poly. Poser likes to smooth sharp edges making them rounded. adding additional polys to make an object high poly is not the answer it has something to do with the joined edges of the mesh and it fixes the problem. If your using poser 5 or poser 6 turn off smoothing for the object and it will not baloon and it will look normal (usually). sorry, usually better with a link n such, not at the top of my game tonight.

I have one product I bought in this marketplace that has 245 000 polygons. It loads and renders fine on my main machine. I have my own product that has 104 000 polygons, and on a Pentium III, 768 Mhz, 256 Mb RAM machine it takes two minutes to load, but once it's loaded it renders in Poser 4 with one light and shadows in 42 seconds (500x500), which is perfectly acceptable. It loads in six seconds on a Pentium IV, 3.2 Mhz, 2 Gig RAM machine. But I have a model made in Lightwave that is 550 000 polygons, and even though I can load it, I can't really do much with it. Sometimes the polygon count is not so much the problem as the texture files. Poser will lock up because of texture files that are too large rather than too many polygons. But all that said, the less polygons, the faster it renders, and when someone is doing animations, they appreciate low polygon modelling.

Well, the props Im working on are pushing 80k+ polys and, since my Poser modelling skills are not great, I know some of it has to do with some overlapping geometry [cant avoid it until I get more skillz!]. I can load and render them fine,though close up they cause some slowness, but under normal conditions they work fine. I do hope to put them in my store, but I wanted to make sure someone wasnt going to freak out about it. BTW: I need someone to test the items out before I actually bundle them up, if your willing to subject yourself to it, send me an email. snappertrx@rgdev.net, and just use the subject PRODUCT TESTING. Thanks! btw: I did find the tutorial on smooth and sharp edges, but I dont want to have to recreate the objects again if I dont have to. Will put it in my memory banks for future reference.

I did this a lot in the Treasures of Egypt 1 & 2. The trick is to break off polygons where the corners meet.In this image the panels and flat surfaces are not welded.

Box 382 polygons.

Message edited on: 07/14/2005 01:09

I use UV mapper to assign groups to the areas I want to break off. I split/spawn them into props and export them unwelded.

Message edited on: 07/14/2005 01:11

Poser 6 also includes support for smoothing groups, which solves a number of shading issues. That feature doesn't work in earlier versions, though.

You should experiment with low polygon counts. I have been creating clothes that really don't have a lot of polygons, but look perfectly smooth in Poser.

Yeah, but my biggest concern [and it probably shouldnt be] is the fact that I have already spent months working on these things and, every time I find out something new, they have to be remade, which is a major pain in the rear, not to mention tiring. Of course, I could be going about this all wrong to begin with. Does someone know an easy way of creating an object and bringing it into Poser without have to import, scale and export every morph? Thats really what kills me is having to do that over and over and over, but it may be the only way. To date, I have never found a good, solid tutorial on how to create content for Poser, so everything I have done is by trial and error. I did see the cd by PhilC for creating Poser content with trueSpace [which I use], but I wont be able to afford it for a few more weeks.

"How many polys is a lot?" really depends on what the prop is. A zillion polys in a highly detailed conforming clothing outfit is one thing, a zillion polys in a simple bedside table is quite another. Generally I work pretty hard to cut out superfluous edges, I just have a thing about 'polygon spam'. It's particularly important to keep poly count trimmed down on things that will have morphs because the morphs tend to compound any bloat by making cr2 files corespondingly bigger etc. I've emailed you snapper, I'll take a look at your mesh and give you feedback if you like. Ob

Instead of fighting Posers tendency to supersmooth things, make it work to your advantage.

I run all my objects I build in Wings through UV-Mapper and split vertices at 43. Gives me perfectly sharp edges while I still retain perfectly smooth curved surfaces where needed:

This little plane is just about 4500 polys:

stahlratte

I start out with the bare minimum of polygons that I need to make an outline of the prop. I go back later to divide them up. If you are making a static prop that you don't intend to morph, you don't need a lot of polygons. You also don't need a lot of the prop is going to be used as a background piece most of the time. If it's something you might morph, you want to add more polygons, to give finer control over the morphs. And if you're doing something like dynamic clothes, you need more polygons to help keep dynamic simulations from choking. If it's a prop that needs to be ultra real close up, then you'll need more polygons. The more polygons you have, the more memory your prop takes up, and in Poser memory is at a premium. Thus, fewer is better, so I think it's better to start low and then add some divisions if you need to.

** Yeah, but my biggest concern [and it probably shouldnt be] is the fact that I have already spent months working on these things and, every time I find out something new, they have to be remade** Which is exactly why I tell people to make their first models free items (for at least a year) instead of store items. As for the morphs, learn Poser magnets. They are less scary than people assume and also a lot more powerful as well. And with magnets you don't need to import/scale/export anything, it's all done right there in Poser.

Why not put the details on it with a displacement map? Works great, ya know.

The thing is, its not really detailed. Ill post some pictures later tonight, if I can, but today has been very busy!