Polygon Count

[ShadowD BOB]

What is the maximum polygon count you can have on OFP?

Thx.

[teaCup]

Hey ShadowD BOB.

I guess the sky's the limit. Probably the heavyest addon i've ever loaded was Scorpio's MIG29 (~13000 faces).
It took more than a minute to load, and reduced my framerate to 2 - 3 fps. Boy i need an upgrade!..

[KTottE]

~65 000 or so

But that's not recommended. High end systems experience slow down already at 15 000 polygons on screen.

I'd say that 4000 is the highest you should go for any model in OFP.
Now, notice the should.

A helluva lot more people will use your addon if it is playable (lower polycount) and you'll get more creds for that ;D

[Deadsoldier]

are we talking polys or faces? cause my f-15 model is around 5800 polys..in O2..its 3900 faces...

cheers

[KTottE]

Polygons and faces are the same thing. And O2 has a polygon optimizer thingamajiggy. 5000 polygons in 3D Studio will be 4000 or so in O2.

[Deadsoldier]

ok , well i think its more like this.. polys are triangles..if u have a surface made of 2 polys..and those 2 (triabngle) polys make a perfect flat surface..then O2 would join those 2 into one face...cause the face is a flat surface..and if 2 adjacent triangle polys are flat...then it will work.

but if u have 2 polys next to each other which are not both the same (flatness..) then u cant join them together..cause then u will loose the difinition of the surface.....hate it when i cant get my idea onto paper..hope u knowhwat i mean.

So maybe in O2...u have less faces than poly count in 3ds..is because those 2 polys that could be joined are joined...and those that cant..are not..thast why you get a different of around or above half the original # of polys in 3ds.

cheers

[Scorpio]

Actually, in my experiments, I found that for a typical 1-2ghz processor would not slow down until the model reaches to about 17,000-20,000. But that is, if you place the plane in the editor and nothing else. I've loaded a 22,000-23,000 poly model in OFP and it slowed it down a bit...And the Mig is nothing compared to what I can find  

[Scorpio]

ok , well i think its more like this.. polys are triangles..

Not exactly...but you're on the right track...
Polys and faces are more or less the same thing...maybe in 3DSM or other programs you can model with triangular polys...but in O2 it lets you make a poly/face which consists of 4 vertices. It can also let you make a poly/face out of 3 vertices, as you said.

[Scorpio]

Polygons and faces are the same thing. And O2 has a polygon optimizer thingamajiggy. 5000 polygons in 3D Studio will be 4000 or so in O2.

Sometimes that poly optimiser will mess up...Showing reversed faces, missing parts, rotated/deformed parts...the list goes on. It's happened to me many times.

[KTottE]

Er, maybe for you. I've never had that. I think it's about how you make your model.

I make all my models thinking that they will be put in-game. Thus using as few polys as possible, and no overly complicated shapes.

Maybe O2 removes shapes that are too complicated?

[Deadsoldier]

well the reason polys are made triangle is because if u have a triangle...u cant have it "non-flat" or no straight surface..cause u have 3 points..and how ever way you arange them..the triangel will always have a flat surface..a square onthe other hand..has 4 ponts...u can twist 2 points on one side....as if your twisting a a piece of metal...u wont have a flat surface in a square...thats why if u created a square where all the points dont make a flat surface..it will devide this square into 2 polys- triangles.....triangles are polys...squares aer not...O2 makes squares out of the sake of makeing things simple...the OFP engine supports treating 1 square as 1 uniform surface.....polys are triangles...whether u have a square..octagon..pentagon..its just something the program supports...

cheers

[Scorpio]

Er, maybe for you. I've never had that. I think it's about how you make your model.

I make all my models thinking that they will be put in-game. Thus using as few polys as possible, and no overly complicated shapes.

Maybe O2 removes shapes that are too complicated?

I had the same statement and question said to me by many others KTottE, yet it happens to me for sure...for some others too. I'm not exactly sure about what is happening...but sometimes large poly models that are not attached together in 3DSM can be the most frequent problems.

[HK]

Erm, sorry dumb q but how do u get your model polygon count?

[STGN]

if you mean how you can how many thereb are you just look down at the botum of the screen and if it dosen say eny thing you just mark a part of the model and it will show.
STGN

[DeadMeatXM2]

the problem with complicated shapes dissapearing is caused by the "polygon optimizer" in O2. Basically it takes all your shapes and converts them into the most simple combination of triangular and square faces possible...

[Planck]

Actually Polygon means 'many sided', so, a polygon is a triangle, square, rectangle, hexagon octagon, dodecahedron, duodecahedron, etc etc.

Any plane face with more than two sides in fact.


Planck

[KTottE]

Yes, but speaking in computer graphic terms, a polygon has three or four points/vertexes (sides), because more than that would be extremely difficult to program.

[earl_laamanen]

Regardless of what O2 says - I think video card performance is always based on triangles - and I always give poly counts based on # of triangles, not 02's numbers.  3dsmax does the same thing - they call it a 'poly count' but it's really a triangle count.

If someone can correct me, that would be great!  Then I could tell you that my weapon poly counts are much lower...

[suchey]

I would be interested in polly count and how it effects performance as well...I propose that the only way to come to a standard is to do independant testing.  I think the best way to accomplish this would be to pick 1 addon from each category, weapon, soldier, vehicle as the standard text subject...then a variety of people use the addon and record framerates under the following conditions:

addon placed in singular spot on a map across all tests
1 unit added (besides self)
increase units by 5 up to an arbitrary max
report framerates and hardware used across the test

This is the only way we will be able to come to some sort of real value.  This would wind up giving us a good idea of performance as it relates to user hardware and a good point for basing polly count on.  The more testing done the better the resulting value.

[KTottE]

Regardless of what O2 says - I think video card performance is always based on triangles - and I always give poly counts based on # of triangles, not 02's numbers.  3dsmax does the same thing - they call it a 'poly count' but it's really a triangle count.

If someone can correct me, that would be great!  Then I could tell you that my weapon poly counts are much lower...

Yes, graphic card performance is measured in number of drawn triangles/second, but they do state that it is triangles.

I.E they don't say "We can draw X million polygons per second" they say "We can draw X million triangles per second".

Most of the time, in both games and 3D applications, a triangle is the smallest piece available (some can have a single dot/vertice/vertex/point as well) and then there's the square polygon, which is made up out of two triangles.

As it's really diverse, there's no "one way" of doing it.
My personal recommendation however is always look at the largest number, I.E the triangles, and then you won't have to redo the whole thing due to high polycount.